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2008

The Religious Philosophy of Richard M Nixon The Religious Philosophy of Richard M Nixon

Robert Benjamin Abel College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences

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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Abel, Robert Benjamin, "The Religious Philosophy of Richard M Nixon" (2008). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626558. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-m8t4-py83

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The Religious Philosophy of Richard M. Nixon

Robert Benjamin Abel

Williamsburg, Virginia

Bachelor o f Arts, San Diego State University, 2002

A thesis presented to the Graduate Faculty o f the College of William and Mary in candidacy for the degree o f

Master o f Arts

Department o f History

The College o f William and Mary August, 2008

© 2008, by Robert Benjamin Abel

All Rights Reserved

APPROVAL PAGE

Associate

This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master o f Arts

Robert Benjamin Abel

Approved by the Committee, July 2008

; . l yom m ir Professor Charles F. McG

Iav—-itiee Chair

vem, History and American StudiesCollege o f William and Mary

'I / / f 4

Assistant Professor Hiroshi Kitamura, History College o f William and Mary

Professor !favid L. HoWnes, Religi6u)j StudiesCollege of William and

ABSTRACT

This thesis provides a chronological and thematic analysis o f Richard M. Nixon’s religious philosophy. It makes particular use o f archival materials that have either not yet been published or have not been interpreted through the lens o f religious belief. While much work has already been done on the most prominent features of the Nixon Presidency— Watergate and his foreign policy achievements— very little o f it seeks an in- depth understanding of Nixon’s religious framework as it developed over the course of his life, or to place Nixon’s beliefs and influences within their historical context. This thesis interprets Nixon as a figure who, despite his well-known political drive, had a discernible spiritual outlook and often described public action and service as moral goals. Nixon especially emphasized moral leadership as a means to direct a country and its people toward goals, spiritual and otherwise; he also put value on the historical process as the final arbiter o f the efficacy o f that leadership. Democracy was morally beneficial because it allowed all citizens to achieve spiritual fulfillment.

Nixon’s religious philosophy had a strong outward orientation; religion was a tool to bring about good on earth, similar to twentieth-century modernism. As a result, for Nixon, devotional and traditional aspects were almost completely neglected. The ways in which Nixon described the purpose o f public service and o f his entire life owe their interpretation to modernist influences to which he was exposed at Whittier College. Furthermore, while Nixon’s identification with conservative religious figures implies his own religious conservatism, an analysis o f his actions and statements calls that religious conservatism into question. Equally puzzling is Nixon’s emphasis on religion and morality and the apparent disconnect between theory and practice. An understanding of Nixon’s unique interpretation o f American Protestantism provides a new perspective o f Nixon’s place within the nation’s political system.

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II.

III.

IV.

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VI.

VII.

iTABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Chronology o f Nixon’s Religious Life and Influences 3

A. Mixed BeginningsUpbringing: Quaker Influences 3 Whittier College 8

B. Early Political CareerThe Herter Committee 22 The Hiss Case 24

C. The Presidential EraChurch in the White House 28Nixon’s Enduring Friendship with Billy Graham 32

Nixon and the Meaning o f History, Leadership, and Democracy 37

Nixon and Civil Religion 51

A. Neo-orthodox and Ecumenical Critics 55B. Evangelical and Conservative Critics 61

Conclusion: Nixon’s Religious Impact; Theory vs. Practice 65

Bibliography 69

Vita 74

iiDEDICATION

Above all, I would like to thank my wonderful wife, Jenny Abel, for all her support during the long hours o f researching, writing, editing, and rewriting. Without her constant love and encouragement, this project would not have been completed.

I would also like to thank my parents for their abiding support. I’m particularly indebted to my father, Robert Abel, for fostering my growing interest in President Nixon and inspiring the topic for this thesis.

Finally, I dedicate this thesis to the memory o f my grandmother, Ruth Abel, to whom I owe a great deal for who and where I am today.

iiiACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to the archival staff of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation in Yorba Linda, California, for graciously accommodating my needs last fall and for their permission to quote from the materials in their possession. The sta ffs familiarity with the archival materials saved me countless hours o f searching and directed me to unique records I had not thought to consider. Their helpfulness made my research trip most rewarding.

I also appreciate the time Professor Joseph Dmohowski, science and special collections librarian of Whittier College’s Bonnie Bell Wardman Library, devoted to answering my many queries and requests for materials.

Finally, I am exceedingly grateful for the research support extended to me by The College o f William & Mary Foundation (through a Tyler Travel Grant); the College o f William and Mary’s Office o f Graduate Studies and Research, Arts and Sciences; and the College’s Roy R. Charles Center.

1I. INTRODUCTION

“He was a liberal in a conservative sort of way.”1 So spoke Dr. Paul Smith, former

president of Whittier College and instructor of Richard M. Nixon, when describing the political

mindset of his most famous pupil. Smith’s definition is political, but the phrase eloquently

describes the paradox of Nixon’s religious outlook as well. Nixon spent his formative years in a

religious environment that cannot easily be defined as either liberal or conservative. The intensity

of that environment has led many to use it as a foil for his later wrongdoings, assuming that he

fell from a great moral height. While many of Nixon’s Whittier acquaintances expressed how

decent and honest Nixon seemed to them, the assumption has been that Nixon internalized all of

his religious instruction, only to apply it selectively throughout his life. The apparent hypocrisy of

Nixon’s actions in light of his religious upbringing deserves special attention in this examination.

Opinions on the thirty-seventh president of the United States span the spectrum, but one

conclusion agreed upon by most is that Nixon is one of the few American politicians “about

whom it is absolutely impossible to be indifferent.”2 Previous examinations of Nixon have tended

to focus on his honesty, character, conservative values, personality, psychological profile, or

political talent. Often missing is a concerted analysis of his religious understanding and beliefs.

One reason is perhaps that those beliefs seemed obvious: Nixon’s friendship with Billy Graham

and his ready identification with conservative religious causes made him appear a conservative

evangelical. The extent to which his associations reflect his own personal views, however, is

debatable and is a concentration of this study.

Works that touch on Nixon’s belief often examine it in the context of another topic or as

part of a larger polemic. Such works frequently begin with a proposition of the former president’s

irreligion—focusing on his deceitfulness and sacrilege against the nation and its institutions

1 Renee K. Schulte, ed. The Young Nixon: An Oral Inquiry (Fullerton: California State University,Fullerton, Oral History Program, 1978), 165.2 David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003), xviii. The excerpt from Greenberg’s book is a quote by Michael Korda.

2which they conclude were at the root of his political activities, most notoriously his handling of

the Watergate crisis. Several books and articles already bear this argument out, focusing on both

his abuse of power and his use of religion for political purposes.3 Still other works offer sustained

attention to Nixon’s religious practice, but do so through the concept of civil religion.4 That

concept is a useful, if somewhat limited, way to analyze Nixon’s public religious expressions and,

as such, is included as part of this study in light of newly released archival materials and in

consideration of his religious views as they evolved throughout his life.

Nixon believed strongly in the functionality and application of religion to society—what

he later referenced as “the morality of aspiration.” Writing in 1994, after a lifetime of living out

this concept, Nixon explained: “The morality of aspiration calls for us to strive to accomplish not

just the things we are required to do but all that we are capable of doing.”5 This achievement-

based ethic of Nixon’s provides the conceptual basis for this study of his religious philosophy.

Preceded by an in-depth examination of his “religious chronology,” an analysis is included that

seeks to illuminate the religious significance Nixon attached to the seemingly secular concepts of

leadership, history, and democracy. Finally, this study will address his muscular advocacy of

religion on the political scene as it so closely coincided with the burgeoning discussion of civil

religion.

We shall see throughout this study that Nixon’s religious beliefs were strongly outward-

directed during his life, with limited insight available even to those who knew him best as to the

importance inner devotion or piety held in his life, if they held a place at all. Nevertheless, his

external workings as evidenced in his personal writings and relationships provide the best chance

3 See, for example Theodore H. White, Breach o f Faith: The Fall o f Richard Nixon (New York: Atheneum, 1975), 322-324. According to White, Nixon’s “true crime” was that he destroyed America’s civilizing myth, its “binding secular religion” of law, order, and tolerance symbolized by the office of the president.4 The concept of civil religion will be developed and discussed in the section on Nixon’s presidency. For the time being, it can be defined as the collection of observable religious practices by national figures.5 Richard M. Nixon, Beyond Peace (New York: Random House, 1994), 12. The term was not Nixon’s own, but was coined by Lon Fuller.

3for his beliefs to be dissected even while his true inner spiritual life may remain somewhat o f a

puzzle. The apparent contradictions, relatively unconventional, and surprising complexity of

Nixon’s religious outlook and understanding are revealed in consulted materials— including those

recently released to the public in July 2007 that were heretofore unavailable to researchers; in the

process, they raise obvious questions as to the sincerity o f Nixon’s avowed beliefs. Why, for

example, did he hold such theologically liberal religious beliefs while supporting so many

conservative causes? Future study o f the newly available archival materials on Nixon may shed

further light on this and other topics surrounding his religious views, and thus, this study seeks to

become part o f a larger, developing investigation o f Nixon’s spiritual life.

II. CHRONOLOGY OF NIXON’S RELIGIOUS LIFE AND INFLUENCES

A. MIXED BEGINNINGS

Upbringing: Quaker Influences

In his writings, notably his memoirs (contained in a work o f the same name), Nixon

characterized his upbringing as “fundamentalist Quaker.” Family life, he said, centered upon

religious activity, with Sundays taken up by four church services. His mother’s side o f the family

was strongly Quaker, the denomination to which his father converted from Methodism.

According to Nixon, most religious expression in his family was silent and personal. He wrote

that his mother considered religion as “sacred:” “She did not believe in speaking familiarly about

sacred things.”6

At the same time, the Quakerism Nixon’s family followed in Southern California differed

from the practices o f Friends Societies elsewhere in America in that the services featured a

minister, public speaking, and hymns. The Yorba Linda Friends Church, where the Nixon family

worshiped, gave “culture shock” to Quakers visiting from out-of-state because o f its lively

6 Richard M. Nixon, In the Arena: A Memoir o f Victory, Defeat, and Renewal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 89.

4services and revivalist atmosphere, punctuated by its steeple and organ.7 Nixon enjoyed a

“religiously intense upbringing,” one that was nurturing and inspirational for him, with his

mother, Hannah, and his grandmother, Almira, as his formative influences and religious role

models.8

To examine what Nixon meant by “fundamentalist Quakerism,” we must first retrace the

history of California Quakerism, which had, by the beginning of the late nineteenth century,

developed into two theologically opposed camps. The Whittier Monthly Meeting, the Quaker

organizational unit in which Nixon was raised, was an evangelical, homogeneous, and

theologically conservative group from its inception in 1887. Its second minister, Thomas

Armstrong, arrived in 1890 from Iowa’s New Providence Monthly Meeting, which would gain

notoriety three years later when issuing deposition measures against Joel and Hannah Bean,

Quaker ministers who held doctrines antithetical to the evangelical revivalists’ tenets of “full and

free salvation” and “complete sanctification.”9 From its beginning, the Whittier Meeting was

heavily evangelical, with the community gaining “a substantial number” of members from the

successes of the many revival services it had held since 1895.10

7 Joseph Dmohowski, “From a Common Ground: The Quaker Heritage of Jessamyn West and Richard Nixon,” California History 73, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 219-220. For further information, see Edwin Palmer Hoyt, The Nixons: An American Family (New York: Random House, 1972), 177-178.8 Nixon, In the Arena, 84-89.9 David C. LeShana, Quakers in California: The Effects o f Nineteenth-Century Revivalism on Western Quakerism (Newburg, OR: The Barclay Press, 1969), 98-99. LeShana is quoting the phrase from Joel Bean, “The Issue,” The British Friend (March 1, 1881). Bean opposed the “new doctrines” of evangelicalism and revivalism, and their resulting “creedal formulations,” because they seemed to undermine the doctrine of the “inner light” and present obstacles in the way of Quakers’ traditionally understood direct access to God (see pp. 58-59 and pp. 96-99 of LeShana). Bean’s opposition to the new evangelical movement resulted in theological controversy and his eventual deposition in 1893 as a Quaker minister. After being deposed, Bean moved from Iowa to California, where he and his wife began the College Park Association of Friends in 1889.10 LeShana, Quakers in California, 115.

5The Whittier Meeting was a part of the larger California Yearly Meeting, established in

1895, which also assumed a strongly evangelistic character. It was, historian David LeShana

writes, “a direct result and extension of the Great Awakening:”11

The revival movement had now [by 1895] extended organizationally from Iowa and Kansas to California. The Yearly Meeting was officially denominated as the “Friends Church” and not as “The Religious Society of Friends.” The pastoral system was inherent from the beginning, and the “new doctrines” that Joel Bean had strongly opposed were now the basis for the yearly meeting. ... This spirit of evangelism and compassionate outreach became the trademark of the California Yearly Meeting, together with those social concerns that were the natural concomitant of the interest in transforming man and his society.12

The California Yearly Meeting drew inspiration from the writings of George Fox and

subscribed to the tenets of the Richmond Declaration of Faith, which was agreed to in an 1887

nationwide theological conference of Quakers held in Richmond, Indiana. That declaration soon

became the standard for the “orthodox and evangelical” and “gospel-ordered community.”13

The Whittier Meeting consciously distanced itself from the more liberal Religious

Society of Friends, eschewing the use of that designation in nearly all of its literature.14 The

Whittier Meeting referred to itself as a “church,” emphasized pastoral leadership, and did not

specifically require all its members to worship in a non-hierarchical “living silence.”15 This

differentiated it and its larger unit, the California Yearly Meeting, from the Pacific Yearly

11 LeShana, Quakers in California, 137. It should be noted that this term refers to the Great Awakening in Quakerism, which roughly coincided with what he terms as the “Third Awakening of American Protestantism.” George Marsden describes this third awakening, which began with Dwight L. Moody, as “revivalist fundamentalism.” Its first revival service was held in 1867 in Walnut Ridge, Indiana (see p. 36 of LeShana). On the other hand, Seth Jacobs’s “Third Great Awakening” took place in the mid-twentieth century and was a function of the Cold War. See Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 60-87.12 LeShana, Quakers in California, 120-121.13 Ibid., 123. The California Yearly Meeting did not officially adopt the Richmond Declaration of Faith, also known as the Authorized Declaration of Faith, until 1967, but up to that point it was the standard by which orthodox Quakers understood themselves to be practicing historic Quakerism.14 Ibid.15 Ibid., 138-139. LeShana quotes the phrase from “The College Park Association of Friends,” an unpublished manuscript in the possession of Howard H. Brinton.

6Meeting, which was formed as an “independent, unaffiliated yearly meeting” and was referred

to early on as “Joel Bean’s Meeting.”16

The Pacific Yearly Meeting operated along more “prophetic” or social-critical lines. It

grew out of the College Park Association, which was incorporated in 1889 and covenanted to

“realize the Kingdom of God within the soul through the act of worship” and “to realize the

Kingdom outwardly in the world.”17 The Pacific Meeting subscribed to the importance of

“outward conduct”—its brief Discipline o f the College Park Association o f Friends (the

Association’s statement of faith) evidencing “little concern for developing theological statements

or articles of faith” while leaving membership in the sect open to all, regardless of theological

orientation.18 It was non-pastoral, held theology to be divisive and unnecessary, and viewed “an

open mind and heart” as key to religious experience as Quakers.19

The California Yearly Meeting, on the other hand, understood itself to be the more

orthodox and evangelical division of California Quakerism. This understanding was clearly

communicated by Quaker minister the Reverend Charles Ball, Nixon’s one-time minister at the

East Whittier Friends Church, which also belonged to the California Yearly Meeting. Ball was

interviewed as a part of the Nixon Oral History Project undertaken by California State University,

Fullerton’s Oral History Program in 1969. In the December 1969 interview, Ball said, “California

Yearly Meeting and Pacific Yearly Meeting have no organic relation whatsoever.”20 He

distinguished between the two meetings in detail, highlighting that the California Yearly Meeting

was in complete agreement with the Richmond Declaration, while the Pacific Meeting was not:

16 LeShana, Quakers in California, 139. Indeed, Bean formed the Association and co-led it from its inception until his death in 1914.17 Ibid., 138, 140. LeShana writes that the Pacific Yearly Meeting was “the result of the original concerns expressed by Joel Bean” (see p. 137). Phrase quoted by LeShana from the Brinton manuscript.18 LeShana, Quakers in California, 141.19 Ibid., 151-152. The phrase is quoted by LeShana from the “Discipline of the Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends,” 1965, 17.20 Interview of the Reverend Charles Ball by Mitch Haddad, Dec. 22, 1969, Nixon Oral History Project, California State University, Fullerton (accessed at www.yorbalindahistory.org). CSUF completed the transcriptions of the 199 interviews that comprised the Project in the late 1970s.

[The Pacific Yearly Meeting] tend[s] to be the more liberal in [theological] interpretation. Maybe I should define what I mean by the term “liberal” as far as they are concerned. It is that they would not necessarily take the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as authority as the evangelical Friends do. We still believe that the primary source of scripture is God, the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Holy Scriptures and gave them and they are secondary. Liberal Friends would be inclined to think that the Scriptures are important, but they are important as other religious literature is important. We evangelical Friends attach more importance to them. They would perhaps not be as quick to acknowledge the deity of Christ as all evangelicals would. ... We are more insistent upon the matter of conversion and accepting Christ as Saviour than they, the liberal Friends, would be. Both groups, however, would put emphasis upon living a life according to the standards of the Sermon on the Mount.21

Ball also noted, when asked how the East Whittier church saw itself in relation to “liberal

Friends,” that “East Whittier Friends took a positive evangelical position” and “would be more

middle of the road as far as evangelical Quakerism is concerned.”22

Thus, during the late nineteenth century, California Quakerism had developed into two

antithetical branches in a similar manner and at the same time that the divide between

fundamentalism and liberal Christianity, or orthodoxy versus orthopraxy, was becoming

increasingly pronounced within American Protestantism. The two branches formalized their

divisions much later: the Pacific Yearly Meeting published its Discipline o f the Pacific Yearly

Meeting in 1965, while the California Yearly Meeting published its agreement with the Richmond

Declaration, Faith and Practice o f California Yearly Meeting o f Friends Church, in 1969.

Thus, Nixon’s family’s membership in the orthodox branch of California Quakerism

elucidates what he meant by the term “fundamentalist Quaker.” Paul Smith, one of Nixon’s

former Whittier College professors and president of the college from 1951 to 1969, explained

further in a 1977 interview that, for Nixon, “the Quaker church influence was not as important as

his home or the influence of his college.”23 Within that home, Smith noted that Nixon’s father,

Frank, was evangelical, and that “he took Dick and Don over to Los Angeles to hear evangelistic

21 Ball interview, CSUF.22 Ibid.23 Schulte, ed., The Young Nixon, 165.

8services when some preacher came to town with revival services.”24 Smith described the Nixon

household, however, as politically “liberal,” and as one whose role models were Woodrow

Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, and Theodore Roosevelt.25 At the same time Smith cautioned

that any Quaker influence on Nixon’s life came through his family and not through the church

itself:

I just doubt that the Quaker influence was primary in his life. I think that the Quaker influence through his mother was an influence all right. I think the influence through the Milhouses—they were all staunch Quakers—was also. Interpretation of Quakerism through family members, I think, was influential, but the organized church I don’t think was so influential. ... I think his college days were influential.26

In distinguishing between the Eastern and Western Quakers, Smith somewhat generically

describes the version of Western Quakerism Nixon experienced as more “evangelical” than

“liberal.” A church that uses a minister instead of relying on silent meetings questions the

congregation’s ability to worship according to the “inner light,” or the congregation might not

realize the primacy of the inner light in worship27 In a separate interview, Nixon’s aunt, Jane

Beeson, likewise described the Nixon household as “an evangelical Quaker home.”28

Nevertheless, Smith acknowledged that the liberal theological influences Nixon received came

not from his home environment but from his professors at Whittier College, namely professor

Joseph Herschel Coffin, a “real Quaker” who was for Nixon an authentic “translation of the

liberal... Quakerism.”29

Whittier College

In 1930, the teenaged Nixon entered Whittier College, an institution founded in 1887 and

named after the famed Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The college was founded

24 Schulte, ed., The Young Nixon, 171.25 Ibid., 164.26 Ibid., 166.27 Ibid., 170-171.28 Ibid., 61.29 Ibid., 169-170.

9simultaneously with the Quaker colony of Whittier, California, and was originally named the

Friends’ College.30 Though Whittier College was founded by the California Yearly Meeting, by

the time Nixon entered the college, its faculty had become known for holding views at odds with

the orthodox Quakers.

Nixon biographer Edwin P. Hoyt described how the aforementioned debate over

“fundamentalism” impacted the relationship between the town and the college. In 1930, the

Reverend Guy Phelps, a Methodist minister conducting revival services in Whittier, began a

debate over the teaching of evolution at the college.31 During his services he also pointed out

some theologically suspect material in Professor Coffin’s 1929 book, The Soul Comes Back.

Phelps’s sermons raised enough concern within the Whittier Monthly Meeting to cast aspersion

on the College’s curriculum and also caused Coffin, professor of philosophy and former dean of

the college, to be investigated before a committee. At the same time, the Whittier Meeting and the

college were not wholly opposed: Coffin was exonerated by the committee, and then College

President Walter F. Dexter felt comfortable enough to announce a counter-lecture by Whittier

professor S. Arthur Watson, a “devout Quaker who believed in evolution.”32

Nixon entered Whittier at the time of Phelps’s controversy and was able to observe

firsthand why his parents had expressed unease about sending him to be educated by professors

who advocated theological and political views that undermined traditional belief. In fact, Nixon

later related that his educational experience did exactly that. Nixon took his college education

seriously, though, “spread[ing] himself out tremendously” among academic and extra-curricular

pursuits.33 His approach to academic work was pragmatic and analytical, not generally

30 Charles W. Cooper, Whittier: Independent College in California (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press,1967), 3-21.31 It is interesting to speculate what, if any, influence this event had on Nixon’s relationship with his father; the elder Nixon had converted to Methodism but retained his evangelical fervor and repeatedly called for revival services. The younger Nixon never mentioned the incident.32 Hoyt, The Nixons, 199-200.33 Schulte, ed., The Young Nixon, 142.

10philosophical.34 Ironically, his essay for a course in philosophy allows for a very revealing

analysis of his spiritual beliefs and state at that time.

That paper entitled “What Can I Believe?” comprised a series of twelve shorter essays, or

“logs,” which he wrote over the course of his senior year (1933-34) for Professor Coffin’s

course, titled the “Philosophy of Christian Reconstruction.” The assignment corresponding with

the essays was for each student to address his or her worldview to specific topics (e.g., the

evolutionary hypothesis), and to, on occasion, address assigned sub-questions as well, and relate

them to his own worldview. Nixon’s thirty-three pages are an examination of why Nixon believed

what he did and how (or if) his religious beliefs fit within a framework of scientific knowledge.

The scientific knowledge Coffin was interested in was primarily psychological analysis,

and the scope of his course is revealing of Coffin’s educational background and religious belief.

A deeper understanding of the course, and of its impact on Nixon, emerges from a brief

digression into Coffin’s background, including the philosophy he presented in his writings.

Coffin obtained his doctorate in psychology in 1907 at Cornell University, studying under the

renowned psychologist Edward Titchener. Coffin’s dissertation, “An Analysis of the Action

Consciousness Based on the Simple Reaction,” was his attempt to define and uncover the

psychology behind voluntary action, and to determine the extent to which social action is

voluntary or conditioned.35 Titchener at that time was attempting to “establish psychology as a

science by the exhibition of its scientific nature,” which could explain human actions by

analyzing them to their lowest possible sensation.36 Titchener came down on the structural side of

the structural-functional debate then occupying the discipline in America.

34 Schulte, ed., The Young Nixon, 142.35 Joseph Herschel Coffin, “An Analysis of the Action Consciousness Based on the Simple Reaction” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1908), 8, 20, 36-39.36 Edwin G. Boring, “Edward Bradford Titchener, 1867—1927,” The American Journal o f Psychology 38 (1927): 497. Titchener’s goal was to give German psychologist William Wundt’s findings added credence by independently discovering them through his “Experimental Psychology” (p. 499).

11After graduating from Cornell, Coffin began to apply a reductionist psychology to

religion, the area that interested him, but his interests were more philosophically oriented than

Titchener would have been comfortable with.37 His first book, The Socialized Conscience (1913),

sought to understand how the “greatest welfare of society” can be brought about through the

“commonly accepted standard of conduct” of all individual members of that society.38 Coffin

viewed ethics as “the science of morality” and sought to establish voluntary action as essential to

moral living.39 A social structure that fostered moral improvement allowed “freedom of choice,”

while one that circumscribed “a worthy end or system of ends” curtails the possibility that

“volitional acts” will result in a meaningful life.40 To Coffin, society was “good” if it was

structured such that its members were able to develop their own personalities:

The supreme moral end is the realization o f the social self or socialized personality, and the moral criterion by which conduct is to be evaluated and directed is the socialized conscience, with its specific virtues of intelligence, prudence, purpose, justice, and goodwill. Conduct is good only as it both brings to fuller realization the total self and proves itself socially constructive. To be socially constructive it must promote directly or indirectly the efforts of the other members of society to realize the same end for themselves.41

Coffin’s “Philosophy of Christian Reconstruction” was an outworking of the thought

contained in Coffin’s Socialized Conscience as well as in his 1929 book The Soul Comes Back.

The course was designed to inculcate a “socialized conscience” in the students in terms of their

actions as Christians. It was, unsurprisingly, psychologically oriented, and was part of the “New

Curriculum” that Coffin and President Dexter began to plan for Whittier in 1923. This

curriculum, later branded the “Whittier Idea,” called for measures that would better link what was

37 Boring, “Titchener,” 495. Titchener had maintained that psychology should be separated from philosophy, and he enabled this goal to be achieved within academia in the early 1910s.38 Joseph Herschel Coffin, The Socialized Conscience (Baltimore: Warwick and York, 1913), 2. While historicizing the morality of past generations, Coffin’s goal was to “understand what the moral authority ought to be under modem conditions” (ibid.).39 Ibid., 31.40 Ibid., 34.41 Ibid., 67. Italics in original. Also perhaps revealing of Coffin’s instrumentalization of morality is a passage referring to “the social molecules called persons” in his The Soul Comes Back (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 10.

12taught in class to “the concrete needs of life.”42 Those “concrete needs” included a religious

education that would “attempt to throw into the foreground of science ... history ... philosophy

and every other subject the spiritual interpretation that by our best insight we believe that Jesus

would give.”43 Perhaps drawn from Titchener’s experimental psychology concept, the new

Whittier curriculum centered around the “Project Method” and a four-year sequence called the

“Correlation Course.”44 The “Philosophy of Christian Reconstruction” was the senior-year

Correlation Course and was of Coffin’s own conception. Coffin described his course as “[a]n

introduction to philosophy, including an effort to correlate the important findings of science.”

Historian Charles Cooper writes, “[t]he thesis of the course [was] that the religion of Jesus

furnishes the only finally workable philosophy of life ... based upon sound sociology.”45

The soundness of Coffin’s sociology as well as the clarity of his concepts can be, and

have been, called into question. The Socialized Conscience received an unfavorable review in

1915 for the vagueness of its terminology and its moral cloudiness, which gave it “an air of

artificiality and even of futility.”46 In fact, the same can be said for The Soul Comes Back. Coffin

makes clear his goal in “reconstruction” is to educate “fundamentalists” into “modernists.”

Modernists alone are able to “square scientific fact and law with religious experience” and see in

“the perfect personality of Jesus” the purpose behind God’s “creative evolution.” Coffin’s middle

ground between faith and non-belief sees the evolutionary process as “not a thrust upward from

42 Cooper, Whittier, 160. Coffin’s brief pamphlet, “The Story of an Educational Adventure: The Whittier Idea,” describes how that “the greatest single factor in [Coffin’s] formative period was the contacts in the psychological laboratory at Cornell University,” but that “these influences called forth a reaction against the distinctly structuralist interpretation of mind that was current there.” The Whittier Idea emphasized a “functional education” that presented the entire curriculum “under a spiritual interpretation.” (Joseph Herschel Coffin, “The Story of an Educational Adventure: The Whittier Idea,” 1932, n.p., 9-11.)43 Ibid., 161.44 Ibid., 166-167.45 Ibid., 166.46 Jno. M. Mecklin, review of The Socialized Conscience by Joseph Herschel Coffin, The Philosophical Review 24, no. 5 (Sept. 1915): 562.

13below, but a pull exerted from above; in turn the ultimate basis of energy or matter itself

becomes the coextensive personality of God.”47

Plainly, Coffin saw creeds and literalism as an obstacle to a practical understanding of

“the teachings of Jesus.” At times Coffin’s conception of Jesus appeared quite orthodox; mostly,

however, He seemed merely to exist as an idealized literary construction found in “that great

religious epic, the Bible.”48 As is often the case, at least in American experience, Coffin’s attempt

to reconcile science and religion muddled and impoverished rather than clarified the two sides,

just as Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock’s attempt had done via geological science in the

mid-nineteenth century.49 The same dilemmas, and others of Nixon’s own making, are addressed

in Nixon’s essays for Coffin’s course. Though revealing of the extent to which he understood his

own theology in comparison to the standards of the religious environment in which he was raised,

they should also be read with Coffin’s ideas in mind. Furthermore, Nixon’s later statements

clearly expressing the continuity of his college-age religious beliefs with those of his later years

indicate that the young Nixon was not merely trying to please Coffin but had begun, at some

point previously, to believe what he was writing in his essays, if Paul Smith’s statements as well

as the similarity of Nixon’s and Coffin’s ideas are taken into account.

Coffin’s assignments called for a critical analysis of the beliefs one usually took for

granted. As a result, in “What Can I Believe?” we have a picture of Nixon’s own religious

upbringing and the extent to which, in his opinion, his beliefs changed during his college career.

In his first essay, Nixon wrote that his parents were “fundamental Quakers” who warned him

before college “not to be misled by college professors who might be a little too liberal in their

views.” After his years at Whittier, however, Nixon found most of his original beliefs

47 Coffin, The Soul Comes Back, 61, 81-82.48 Ibid., 61.49 See Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History o f the American People (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972), 766-767.

14“shattered.”50 At the same time, Nixon indicated that he did not come close to losing his faith:

although he described his beliefs as having undergone a radical transformation at Whittier, Nixon

wrote toward the end of the paper that his true faith, although private and perhaps sentimental,

began where science could no longer go.51 Nixon also wrote, “[M]y education has taught me that

the bible, like all other books, is a work of man and consequently has man made mistakes.”52

While not explaining what those mistakes might be, the context suggests they are the miracles.

The apparent contradiction between Nixon’s beliefs and his faith makes sense, however, if we

realize that Nixon altered or discarded his doctrinal beliefs but kept his faith, however abstract a

concept it had become.

Nixon gradually worked his way through the assigned philosophical questions, but as his

writing progressed, so too did his support for belief in God and the compatibility of faith with

science. Nixon analyzed the “problem of God,” viewing him as the result of social necessity,

something reason and logic cannot explain away:

Men always strive for something higher than themselves. They should attempt to develop their minds until they can realize the higher values of life. ... To have a faith that higher reality than ourselves does exist, means much more than to merely “reason” ourselves into the higher levels.53

Athough Coffin’s course was not designed to destroy but to “reconstruct” faith on

modernist terms, Nixon was forced to confront matters such as the theory of evolution that would

50 Richard M. Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 19, 1933-34 “What Can I Believe” for course “Philosophy of Christian Reconstruction” (folders 11 and 12), box 12, Nixon Family Collection, Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, Yorba Linda, CA.51 In his memoirs, RN: The Memoirs o f Richard Nixon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), Nixon reproduced a portion of an essay (“My Brother Arthur”) he wrote for a freshman English course. The relevant portion reads: “There is a growing tendency among college students to let their childhood beliefs be forgotten. Especially we find this true when we speak of the Divine Creator and his plans for us. I thought that I would also become that way, but I find that it is almost impossible for me to do so. Two days before my brother’s death, ... he repeated that age-old child’s prayer which ends with those simple yet beautiful words: ‘If I should die before I wake, I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take.’ ... And so when I am tired and worried, and am almost ready to quit trying to live as I should, ... I pray that it may prove true for me as it did for my brother Arthur,” (10-11). That Nixon remained so deeply affected by Arthur’s death many years afterward, to the extent that he was never able to talk about it with his other surviving brother Edward, would suggest that he reacted conservatively and defensively to the challenge to drop his faith.52 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 2.53 Ibid., 23.

15create dissonance between faith and reason. In his essays, Nixon handled this by first

establishing the facts as they were presented to him in Coffin’s lectures; he cited Coffin’s

material frequently in his essays and twice reproduced diagrams Coffin drew during lectures.54

Nixon also set the arguments in strict terms; thus, to Coffin’s question, “Does evolution have

anything valuable to suggest regarding origins?” Nixon wrote: “Evolution does not attempt to

explain the creation of the first atoms, of the infinitives discussed in section one; that is the

problem of the philosopher. ... Personally I cannot accept either of these theories [Darwin’s or

Lamarck’s]. I like better the theory of Loyd [sic] Morgan, the idea of emergent evolution, and

that of Bergson, creative evolution. In these theories we must have some organizing power, some

great force, which I chose [s/c] to call God.”55 Nixon concluded his analysis of evolutionary

theory:

I do not believe that evolution will destroy one’s religious beliefs if he accepts God as the great power behind all creation and development. There is a danger however in going too far, as I believe the behaviorists have, and in that way destroying our belief that man has something greater than animals; a spiritual attitude that did not come through evolution, but through God.56

Coffin heavily emphasized the process of “creative evolution” in The Soul Comes Back.

Something akin to an iron law of history, creative evolution explains “the way things came to be

as they are” but also reveals the “mechanism” through which “the ultimate purposes of the

universe are being worked out.”57 Dr. Paul Smith, in a colloquial manner, revealed that Coffin

was expounding on the doctrine of the “inner light” in presenting creative evolution in a Quaker

context:

The liberal Quaker believes in the “inner light.” That is the speaking of the forces of the universe—do you listen to them? Now that is liberal, very liberal. If it is true that everything else being equal or unequal, in the long or the short run, good

54 These diagrams appear in essays four and five of “What Can I Believe?” Another similar diagram appears in the seventh essay but is unattributed.55 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 4-5.56 Ibid. Throughout his other essays, Nixon referred to this concept of theistic evolution, with the caveat that he believed God is both immanent and transcendent.57 Coffin, The Soul Comes Back, 61, 80.

16triumphs over evil—which I think it does—why is it like that? ... Quakers do [believe good triumphs over evil]. It’s the conscience of the inner light.58

Nixon favored creative evolution throughout his essays. In essay four, for example, in

which Nixon discussed the nature of the soul, his focus was the evolution from “personality” to

“spirituality.”59 What is remarkable about Nixon’s references to God, the soul, and other spiritual

matters is that they were mostly achievement-based. He wrote: “The soul is the culmination of the

development of a being, the highest level to which that being can aspire. We can maintain our

concept of God; we can still say that the soul is that part of us which enables us to understand

God’s works.”60 Nixon defined the soul in essay five, “More About the Soul.” After recounting

the traditional, historical concepts of the soul, Nixon evaluated the “development concept” of the

soul, which means that “the soul... is the grandest achievement of the higher levels of

personality.”61 Nixon supported this concept because it differentiates animal from human life and

“because the individual must develop his life and personality in order to achieve his soul in the

fullest sense of the word.”62

Nixon devoted space to developing a religiously based understanding of democracy in

essay six. Democracy, Coffin taught, was the ideal vehicle for members of a society to develop

their personalities. “Self-realization” came when equal opportunity and the absence of

exploitation allowed citizens to freely philosophize and act out their ideals.63

Under a system which standardizes all men, which suppresses the individual, the knowledge of the race becomes stagnant; it no longer grows. But under a system which provides for division of labor and for individual initiative, we find a

58 Schulte, ed., The Young Nixon, 170.59 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 7—9.60 Ibid., 9.61 Ibid., 11.62 Ibid., 11. Perhaps Nixon was most comfortable with this concept because, as he says on the following page: “It does not conflict with my religious beliefs (which are surprisingly strong for a college student). ... Men may still look upon the animals and say - ‘We are God’s children, because He has given us souls with which to know Him,’” (12).63 Coffin, The Socialized Conscience, 152.

17continual growth in the body of knowledge. Science, literature, philosophy— all benefit through such a system.64

Just as Nixon’s concept of God was one approached through vigorous activity, so too was

democracy something to be striven for, not a passive goal. Working for democracy was a high

calling because it laid the foundation for individuals to move to a higher religious state.

Communism, on the other hand, eventually destroyed initiative (by standardizing all men), but it

seemed to Nixon at the time no less pernicious than a free society that lacked the basic forms of

equality. An example of this occurring in America was the “San Jose Lynching” of November 26,

1933, which Nixon discussed in one of his essays.65 Inspiring leadership in a democracy,

however, was key to its moral uplift because without it, “society, moved entirely by its emotions,

forgets all the knowledge it has acquired. Crowds become primitive in their emotions and

instincts, if they are not directed along the right paths.”66

If democracy was the foundation for the development of the socialized personality, a

leader was necessary to direct the construction of a suitable dwelling. The leader’s duty was to

concentrate on “the unity which permeates the individual and the group; the sentiments of honor,

of right, of morality; and finally there is the great scarcely untouched field of the aesthetic.”67

Democracy, then, was good, but the supreme good was that which “provides us ... freedom

which gives the personality a chance to fully develop.”68 Nixon recognized the importance of

social cohesion in the administration of democracy but gave little hint as to how this should work

in reality. While individual freedom was to be granted to the greatest extent, Nixon saw difficulty

64 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 13.65 After a prominent California citizen, Brooke Hart, was kidnapped and killed by two men, a mob broke into the jail where the men were held (they had since been captured) and lynched them. The incident became a controversy not only because of its lawlessness but because it was broadcast live over the radio and received support from the highest levels of the California government.66 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 13.67 Ibid.68 Ibid., 16.

18with problems such as “crime, poverty and racial prejudice” emanating from too much

freedom?9 Assuming that the majority would be opposed to these problems, his solution was that

“the welfare of the majority must be placed before the desires of a minority.”70 Nixon used a

similar construction in his later work In the Arena, in which he wrote, concerning the problem of

religious tolerance: “While the majority should not impose its religious views on the minority, the

minority should respect the views of the majority. Reverse bigotry by a minority is just as

reprehensible as bigotry by the majority.”71

Nixon returned to his analysis of God’s purpose in the seventh essay, “The Moral and

Spiritual Levels of Life.” Here, Nixon made a rare admission that God was not only a God to seek

after, but is one of judgment: “God sanctioned those things which were old, those things which

contributed to the welfare of the race.”72 In that vein, he admitted: “Moral authority comes from

God; not in the literal interpretation theory of the bible sense, but in the sense that God is the

perfect reality to which men are striving. God is the creative force at work in us which makes us

wish to realize the higher values.”73

It is easy to become confused by Nixon’s God—sometimes only a vague concept, other

times referred to with the personal pronoun “he,” sometimes authoritative, and other times

distant, leaving all striving up to men. When asked to define “spirituality,” Nixon wrote that it

was “the supreme achievement of human personality” and “an aim toward which men can strive.”

Spirituality had both an inward- and outward-directed nature such that society itself could be

improved if its spirituality were directed by a gifted and able leader. But how did Nixon relate

spirituality with his idea of God? His answer seemed to be that society should pursue those values

that have stood the test of time, those that have been sanctioned by God; this quest toward the

69 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 15.70 Ibid.71 Nixon, In the Arena, 91.72 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 17.73 Ibid., 18.

19“common moral code” was the road to “ultimate good,” which was “epitomized by God.”74 At

the same time, however, morality to him was more useful for its function rather than as something

good in itself.75

In his “Half Way Mark” essay, which evaluates his intellectual progress thus far during

the course, Nixon reiterated how he came to the class “practically a fundamentalist,” having for

the most part kept his “old beliefs,” save for those regarding the “absolute infallibility of the bible

[s/c].” Fortunately, however, the “fragments of [his] old religion” have “proved useful in building

this new philosophy,” which Nixon proceeded to explain in a somewhat vague manner. What is

clear from Nixon’s explanation, however, is that, according to Coffin, life developed in the order

of “Cosmos, Life, Mental Life, Conscious Life, Self Conscious Life,” with God “providing] the

impetus and goal for our striving.” In other words, Nixon associated God with struggle, especially

struggle for a worthwhile goal. In the form of earthly political systems, democracy was that

worthwhile goal, for it alone allowed for the development of “that type of moral law which will

most highly develop the personality along with society.”76

The remainder of Nixon’s writing concerned the “religion of Jesus” and an exploration of

how that religion could be practically applied. Nixon wrote that Jesus’ “life and teachings”

embodied the “highest conception of value the world has ever known,” excluding the “miraculous

events which surround his life,” which Nixon cautioned we must not “be sidetracked by.” Nixon

saw the entire Bible for its moral utility, but at the same time specified that, while he personally

belonged to the “Christian religion,” he preferred his Christianity “as Jesus taught and lived it,”

74 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 18. Nixon allowed his essay to fall into a few contradictions, one being that he previously criticized the blind following of tradition, while specifying that traditional beliefs are usually the best because they have stood the test of time.75 For example, Nixon wrote in essay seven: “Morality is a growing thing. We must study, we must experiment, we must strive for that type of moral law which will most highly develop the personality along with society,” (ibid., 17).76 Ibid., 19-20.

20not “as the orthodox church represents it.”77 Nixon’s view of the Bible was that, as a “record of

man’s striving for God” and “man’s finest record of religious writings,” it “in a sense reveals God

to man.”78 That is, God was not a distinct deity but an idea that symbolized the highest

achievement of all values. To Nixon, “Jesus’ religion was a social religion,” one that necessitated

the salvation not only of individuals but “of society” as well. Democracy alone, he believed, was

the vehicle for societal salvation, as it “gives men a chance” to follow Christ’s teachings such that

the “kingdom of God can be established on earth.”79

Interestingly, Nixon referred to the “What Can I Believe?” essays in both his memoirs

and In the Arena. In the memoirs he incorporated quotes from pages one, twenty-five, and

twenty-six of his essays for Coffin, writing, “This composition gives a clearer picture of my

beliefs, questions, and uncertainties as a college student than anything I could reconstruct

today.”80 But in his In the Arena, Nixon quoted from the same passage—found on page one of

“What Can I Believe?”—and then asserted: “I adhere to those same beliefs to this day.”81 Nixon

devoted so little space in his memoirs to expounding upon the specifics of his religious views

because the book concentrated heavily on his White House years. Of 1,090 pages, only 365 pages

are devoted to Nixon’s life before the presidency (including the 1968 election), which is what

anyone reading the book in 1975 would have expected. Nixon also did not feel it was the time or

place to discuss his actual beliefs. The tremendous backlash resulting from the release of the

White House tapes and the general feeling of corruption and manipulation hovering over his

administration meant that any admission of deep religious convictions would only have tainted

the religious causes with which he had been identified.82 By 1990, however, Nixon felt that the

77 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 24-25.78 Ibid.79 Ibid., 27-29.80 Nixon, Memoirs, 16.81 Nixon, In the Arena, 89.82 Nixon wrote to the Reverend John Pollock on December 30, 1986, that he did not want to visit the Reverend Billy Graham after resigning the presidency because he “frankly felt it would be embarrassing for

21nation had moved far enough beyond Watergate that he could begin to explain himself. He

wrote then (in his In the Arena): “One of the most unfortunate [revelations during his resignation]

was the disclosure that I had used profanity. As a matter of fact, most people do, at one time or

another—especially in Washington. But since neither I nor most other Presidents had ever used

profanity in public, millions were shocked.”83

In addition to indicating that Nixon remained surprisingly true to the religious views

expressed in his college essay, the existing evidence suggests that, in particular, he retained his

metaphorical understanding of the tenets of orthodox Christianity. His views on leadership and

his religious conception of democracy remained as well. The relative speed of his conversion

from a “fundamentalist Quaker” to a modernist (Coffin’s goal) suggests that his religious life at

home, while conservative in belief to an extent, did not provide him with a strong grounding in

theology, but rather gave him a sense of religion being an outer-directed function. At the same

time, his mother’s influence was that true spirituality was something very private. This may have

discouraged Nixon from studying theology due to its “divisiveness,” while encouraging him to

view religion as a means to social progress.

The modernist strain that developed in Nixon’s views by the end of college (and

remained there throughout his life) is obvious and perhaps most noteworthy of all. Coffin viewed

modernism as the desirable point of arrival for his students. Yet Nixon’s talk of a “religion of

Jesus” suggests a Unitarian emphasis within that modernist framework. To say, as Nixon did, that

Jesus’ religion could bring about the salvation of society; that he lived and grew in the hearts of

men; that “men who achieve the highest values in their lives may gain immortality;” and that “the

[Graham] and ... did not want to drag him down with [himself].” Nixon to Pollock, letter, Dec. 30, 1986, Special People A-K. Graham, Billy and Ruth 1980-1990 (folder 4), box 1, Post-presidential Correspondence, Yorba Linda.83 Nixon, In the Arena, 90. An elaboration on his reasoning is recorded in Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter (New York: Random House, 1998): “The criticism about my coarse language bothers me, and it bothers Mrs. Nixon. If you could have spent five minutes with Johnson or Kennedy, your ears would’ve curled. All presidents swear, and everyone acted like I was the first one” (289).

22modem world will find a real resurrection in the life and teachings of Jesus” is another way of

saying that Jesus is metaphorically understood to be mankind.84 Nixon meant by “immortality”

the continuation of the human race, not of the individual believer.85 Furthermore, Nixon’s writing

downplayed miracles and orthodoxy, which he came to believe was missing the point, if Christ

really symbolized humanity 86

B. EARLY POLITICAL CAREER

Virtually all observers agree that Nixon had remarkable political success during his

lifetime, beginning with his election to Congress as a California Representative in 1947. Some of

his fortunes came from being in the right place at the right time, but Nixon also possessed the

drive to succeed and the ability to realize a good opportunity for advancement when it arose.

Friends and family members noticed his strong work ethic and competitive streak early on; in the

academic arena, he put those traits to use, absorbing all that he could about subjects with which

he was likely to become engaged. Those characteristics worked to his advantage during his major

appointment to the Herter Committee, also known as the Select Committee on Foreign Aid, in

1947. Incidentally, this committee exposed him to the international scene and gave him a chance

to apply his religious worldview to events and philosophies he had previously only studied. It also

introduced him to his future mentor, John Foster Dulles, and gave him an understanding of

European Communism that would help him so easily relate to Whittaker Chambers almost one

year later.

The Herter Committee

The Congressional committee led by Christian Herter would view firsthand the state of

postwar Europe, decide the extent to which American aid was needed, and then report its findings

84 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 25-26; William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 36.85 Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 37.86 Ibid.

23back to Congress. Nixon was assigned to the committee partly for his intellectual abilities and

interest in geopolitics, and partly because those selecting the committee members felt that a new

Congressman, perhaps one from California, would add a different perspective to the

investigation. The committee members would sail to Europe aboard the Queen Mary ocean liner.

Prior to departing, they were split into five subcommittees that would tour different countries of

the continent. Nixon was assigned, along with several colleagues, to Britain, Germany, Italy, and

Trieste. After the trip he produced an eighty-five-page, typewritten report full of shrewd

observations about human nature and the challenges the West would face in its struggle against

international Communism.87 Altogether, the Congressmen’s findings, which consisted of hard

data, analysis, and anecdotal evidence gathered from extensive footwork throughout the

continent, and the “legislative expert guidance” they gave Congress after returning from Europe,

paved the way for the Marshall Plan to be passed by Congress.88 In addition, many committee

members left for Europe with no strong feelings for foreign aid but returned strongly advocating

it; this “change in attitude” gave the plan added credence.89

Nixon was especially impressed by the difficulties Europe faced from the well-organized

and persistent Communist faction. His report was full of instances in which local Communist

parties tried to coax or coerce the European citizenry into supporting them, with either food or

violence. While Nixon believed that Communism must be opposed spiritually—he believed it to

be a rival religious faith—he believed that religious belief needed to be directed toward an end in

order to be successful. In that regard, he valued the function of religious belief for bringing about

transformation in society. “Spirit” directs action, and Europe was in danger because the war had

87 Nixon had held generally anti-Communist views since Whittier but had yet to view Communism as the pernicious threat that he viewed it after sitting on the Herter Committee; this particular idea is found in Irwin F. Gellman, The Contender: Richard Nixon—the Congress Years, 1947-1952 (New York: The Free Press, 1999), 122.88 A. S. J. Carnahan, “Congressional Travel Abroad and Reports,” Annals o f the American Academy o f Political and Social Science 289 (Sept. 1953): 123.89 Harold L. Hitchens, “Influences on the Congressional Decision to Pass the Marshall Plan,” The Western Political Quarterly 21, no. 1 (March 1968): 62.

24so diminished that spirit that other (secular, but generally non-Christian) faiths were becoming

appealing. Nixon concluded several of his country reports by writing that the European people

appeared to “lack the hope and spirit” needed to revive themselves. American aid was thus highly

desirable as an interim solution to the crisis in Europe. Only this aid, the Congressmen argued,

could prevent those nations from “going Communist” by essentially voting with their stomachs

while their resistance was weakest.90

The Hiss Case

An opportunity of a much grander scale than his appointment to the Herter Committee

occurred when Nixon was offered a seat on the House Committee on Un-American Activities

(HUAC). This appointment not only furthered his political career but introduced him to a man

whose life impacted Nixon’s, and from whom we can gain insight into Nixon’s religious views.

During one of the committee’s investigations into allegations of Communist espionage, Whittaker

Chambers was subpoenaed to testify regarding disclosures he previously made about an

espionage ring operating out of Washington. A former Communist, he told the committee that he

had been a part of another ring during his Communist days, but had knowledge as to both the

extent and members of the Washington ring. He shocked all in the audience when he named one

of the members: Alger Hiss. Hiss had built his career in the American government starting with a

clerkship for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and holding many prominent positions in various

New Deal agencies. At the time of the investigation, he was chairman of the Carnegie

Endowment for Peace.

Hiss, outraged by the accusation, testified before the Committee and apparently

persuaded most of the committee members of his innocence. Nixon, however, suspected Hiss was

lying. In his Memoirs, Nixon recalls, “he was too suave, too smooth, and too self-confident to be

90 Herter Committee Trip Report (England section, p. 5; France section, p. 1), Typed Reports by Country (folder 17), Herter Committee Trip File, box 1, Pre-presidential Series 206, Yorba Linda.

25an entirely trustworthy witness.”91 Nevertheless, the committee deemed it both impossible and

politically inexpedient to prove that Hiss had been a Communist—Hiss’s testimony having

dramatically moved public opinion to his side—but in proving that Chambers and Hiss somehow

knew each other, the case and the questioning could continue. Hiss was eventually convicted of

perjury for denying he knew Chambers, but was never convicted of espionage because the statute

of limitations had passed. During the twists and turns of the case, however, Nixon had ample

opportunity to examine Chambers’s testimony, and the result was a close and lasting friendship

between them.

What Chambers and Nixon recorded about each other greatly illuminates the nature of

their mutual admiration, and is also helpful for understanding Nixon’s religious view of the

world. In Witness, Chambers recalled that Nixon “was a man with one of those direct minds

which has an inner ear for the ring of truth.”92 Chambers respected Nixon, especially because

Nixon alone “made the Hiss Case possible.”93 Chambers’s indebtedness to Nixon was more than

simple gratitude, however, for the moral support of Nixon and others who took his side. Writing

in 1952, Chambers noted that the Nixon and Chambers families were close friends; the Nixons, in

fact, often paid visits to the Chamberses’ farm in Westminster, Maryland:

Throughout the most trying parts of the Case, Nixon and his family, and sometimes his parents, were at our farm, encouraging me and comforting my family. My children have caught him lovingly in a nickname. To them, he is always ‘Nixie,’ the kind and the good, about whom they will tolerate no nonsense. His somewhat martial Quakerism sometimes amused and always heartened me. I have a vivid picture of him, in the blackest hour of the Hiss Case, standing by the bam and saying in his quietly savage way (he is the kindest of men): “If the American people understood the real character of Alger Hiss, they would boil him in oil.”94

Nixon’s friendship with Chambers is important to mention for the ideological dimension

Chambers encouraged in Nixon as well as for understanding the type of character to which Nixon

91 Nixon, Memoirs, 55.92 Whittaker Chambers, Witness (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1980), 555.93 Ibid., 557.94 Ibid., 792-793 n. 2.

26was drawn. Chambers held a religio-philosophical view of history, seeing it as a dialectical

process and moved by the struggle between good and evil. Both men emphasized struggle and

crisis, but Chambers had actually lived out that philosophy in the most dire of circumstances.

Nixon benefited from his relationship with Chambers not only intellectually but politically; he

wrote in Six Crises that the Hiss Case gave him the credentials to successfully compete for a

place on the Eisenhower ticket.95

The American political environment at the time Eisenhower and Nixon took office in

1953 was so openly religious that historian Seth Jacobs termed it “America’s Third Great

Awakening.” Jacobs attributed the anxieties of the Cold War and the impact of World War II to

the increasing attention Americans paid not only to “religiosity” but to the future of Christian

civilization in the face of an adversarial world. Americans saw in this adversarial world a variety

of alternative faiths that set themselves against Christianity. Into this environment the Republican

National Committee in 1955 proclaimed Eisenhower “not only the political leader, but the

spiritual leader of our times.”96 Eisenhower’s own style of speaking placed the Cold War in an

explicitly religious framework. Although his oft-repeated gaffe about the importance of having a

“deeply felt religious faith” regardless of specific creed is often cited as proof of a religious fad

sweeping the nation, Eisenhower consistently apposed Christianity and Communism and urged

religious faith as essential for American society.97

Nixon later noted that, while Eisenhower urged him to incorporate references to God in his

speeches during the 1960 presidential campaign, he felt uncomfortable doing so because his

95 Richard M. Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 1.96 Jacobs, Miracle Man, 67. Jacobs quoted Eisenhower as making the remark, but the phrase came from a resolution of support for Ike offered by the Republican National Committee; it is difficult to imagine Eisenhower speaking so vainly of himself! See “G.O.P. Chiefs Push Eisenhower Draft; He Merely Smiles,” New York Times (Feb. 18, 1955): 1, 28. The quote is found on p. 28 under “Text of Resolution.”97 See “Eisenhower Tells of Zhukov Ouster,” New York Times (Dec. 23, 1952): 16. Also quoted in Jacobs, Miracle Man, 67.

27religious faith was “intensely personal and intensely private.”98 Indeed, few of Nixon’s

speeches from the period of his vice presidency contained such references; more common were

those urging moral leadership that would provide for peace and freedom. Nixon did gain a sense

of moral and spiritual leadership, however, from the influence of both Eisenhower and secretary

of state John Foster Dulles. Dulles was more outspoken and explicit than Eisenhower in

“interpret[ing] international tensions in religious terms,” specifically Christian terms. Some of his

religious ideas bear similarity to those previously voiced by Nixon; Dulles called for a “new

world order” that would place faith in God above “deification of the state” and would operate

based on “the spirit of Christ.”99 Only a “dynamic” Christianity would endow the nation with the

spiritual strength to prevail over the eventual “battle between Christianity and Communism.” It is

therefore not surprising that Nixon and Dulles became amicable colleagues while serving under

Eisenhower.

Dulles had actually noticed Nixon as early as his work with the Herter Committee; the

two began corresponding throughout Nixon’s early political career, Dulles being instrumental in

recommending Nixon for the vice-presidential slot.100 In fact, he sought to make Nixon his

replacement secretary of state after 1956.101

Dulles and Nixon respected each other highly, and while not averse to using one another

to gain political influence, the two men shared the same beliefs, including their religious

outlook.102 Both men consulted each other for ideas to include in their speeches; in Nixon’s

example, it is likely that the space he devoted—in sometimes very technical- and tactics-oriented

material—to the importance of spiritual strength in addressing Communism reflected Dulles’s

98 Nixon, In the Arena, 88-89.99 Jacobs, Miracle Man, 73. “Spirit of Christ” is a quotation of Dulles’s.100 Benjamin J. Goldberg, “The Vice Presidency of Richard Nixon: One Man’s Quest for National Respect, an International Reputation, and the Presidency” (PhD diss., College of William and Mary, 1998), 44.101 Ibid., 59.102 Ibid., 64.

28influence.103 Dulles, like Chambers, brought home to Nixon the necessity of interpreting the

Cold War through a religious framework. Chambers’s approach was more philosophically based,

while Dulles shared with Nixon a technical and analytical approach to international relations.

Nixon’s personal style was to focus on the details of international events, as many of his speeches

demonstrate. But he had repeatedly encountered role models who pushed him to incorporate a

spiritual interpretation of how those details fit into an overall framework. These role models also

encouraged in him an outward-oriented practice of religion that depended on virtually no

understanding of theology or creeds, but rather on the benefits religious belief confers on

humanity.

C. THE PRESIDENTIAL ERA

Church in the White House

Perhaps Nixon’s most unique religious legacy as president was that he became the first

president to hold religious services at the White House. Religious observance by the chief

executive became a White House function during the Eisenhower Administration, which initiated

the tradition of the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfasts.104 The breakfasts were events at which

members of both political parties would convene for approximately an hour to listen to a sermon

and offer prayers for the nation. Each president after Eisenhower kept the tradition, including

Nixon. However, Nixon’s church services were a new institution.

For each service, Nixon approved the minister, but the order of the service was planned

by White House staffers. Over the course of time, the services featured an eclectic group of

ministers of a wide range of denominations, both Protestant and Catholic, and on at least one

occasion a Jewish rabbi spoke. A December 1970 letter from the director of communications for

103 Goldberg, “Vice Presidency,” 73.104 Jacobs, Miracle Man, 69.

29the executive branch, Herbert Klein detailed the affiliations of those who had presided over the

services up to that point. The list reads

Evangelists - Billy Graham has been there twice Presbyterians - four have preached House of Representatives Chaplain has preached Baptists — five have preached Roman Catholics — five have preached Dr. Norman Vincent Peale - has preached twice

(Reformed Church of America)One minister each of Jewish, Lutheran, Quaker, Greek Orthodox, United Church of Christ105

In his letter, Klein made a point of emphasizing that the administration considered the

services as “an important, non-political part of the White House”—a point also frequently pressed

by Nixon, who often expressed a firm desire to avoid being seen as using religion for political

purposes. Whether or not he did indeed use the services for such purposes is debatable. His own

description for the reasons behind the services are contained in his introduction to White House

Sermons, a compilation of the twenty-three sermons given at the White House Sunday services

held between 1969 and 1971. In it, he stated: “When I was elected to the highest office in the

land, I decided that I wanted to do something to encourage attendance at services and to

emphasize this country’s basic faith in a Supreme Being. It seemed to me that one way of

achieving this was to set a good example.”106 He also said he initiated the services because of his

“intense dislike of “going to church for show.” He continued: “In my family, worship was always

a very private matter. Whenever a President goes out to church, the news media ... feel obligated

to cover it. ... This is not my idea of the atmosphere that should surround a worship service.”107

It is difficult to know what Nixon meant by this latter remark. If worship was for him

such a private matter, why appear in church at all? That he invited countless political officials and

105 Herbert G. Klein to Ted Lewis, memorandum, Dec. 7, 1970, RM2 - 1 Religious Service in the White House 10-l-70/[12-31-70], box 12, White House Central Files, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.106 Richard M. Nixon, introduction in Ben Hibbs, ed., White House Sermons (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), vi.107 Ibid., vii.

30well-known public figures—sometimes even international ones—of diverse backgrounds and

even faiths, has been interpreted as proof that he harbored a purpose aside from personal worship.

The White House services were covered from time to time by reporters, friendly and hostile, who

were invited to the event. Nixon later gave other reasons for his dislike of publicly appearing in

church: he preferred private services to public ones; he did not want to inconvenience a church

with “hordes of pistol-packing Secret Service men;” he did not want to allow “publicity-hungry

ministers” the chance to lecture him; and he “would not tolerate the spectacle of draft dodgers

defiling a church by demonstrating outside because a President was in attendance.”108 In 1993

Nixon echoed those same sentiments to his foreign policy assistant, Monica Crowley: “If there

were a good preacher or minister, I’d go. But everyone goes about God differently. Besides, when

I go, it’s like a show. Everyone is watching me rather than listening to the important things being

said from the pulpit. I don’t want to take away anything from anyone else’s experience, including

my own.”109

Nixon’s comments notwithstanding, the White House church services received much

publicity, both positive and negative, and an atmosphere of media attention did eventually settle

on the services. Opinions of the services tended to be divided along party lines, but not always.

Several theologians accused Nixon of inviting only wealthy supporters to the services, while

others thought church services in a government building clearly violated the principle of

separation of church and state. Much of the criticism from all angles, however, discounted

Nixon’s intentions: the church services were one part of a larger plan to provide moral leadership

to the nation. As Nixon wrote in 1962, “Only to the extent that individuals have made a personal

108 Nixon, In the Arena, 90.109 Crowley, Nixon in Winter, 401.

31commitment to that [religious] faith can America be truly characterized as a truly strong

religious nation.”110

His continual focus on leadership suggests that Nixon saw himself as a leader whose

purpose was to bring America to moral and international greatness. Indeed, much of the criticism

against him after his resignation focuses on precisely that understanding. A close reading of

Nixon’s religious writings reveals that he makes a distinction between denominational religion

and inclusive religion. At first glance his references to the “Supreme Being” or to “faith in God”

appear to be the mark of a man who wanted to appear religious in a manner appealing to all

people. The authors of Civil Religion and the Presidency, for example, write that “Nixon [was]

the quintessential high priest of American civil religion in its vaguest form.”111 This supposed

vagueness, combined with the administration becoming discredited by the Watergate scandal,

was seen by some as evidence that Nixon was merely using religion for political purposes, while

those of another spectrum were offended or alarmed that Nixon did not make a more specific

public confession of faith, appearing to instead engage in mere “evangelical tokenism.”112

Nixon’s engagement with conservative evangelicals suggests sincere belief—nearly all

his religious proclamations can be rationalized to that end—but his association with them is better

explained by their shared moral and political sensibilities. On many doctrinal issues Nixon might

well have been comfortable with theological liberals, but their opposition to him and his policies,

combined with his disregard for theological correctness, caused him to feel more at home with

those who shared his general political outlook, regardless of their theological conservatism.

110 Richard N. Nixon, draft copy of “A Nation’s Faith in God” for Decision (Sept. 10, 1962), Statements for Publication - RN, box 1 (Campaign 1962: Speeches, Public Statements, and Schedules), Pre-presidential Papers, Yorba Linda.111 Richard V. Pierard and Robert D. Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency (Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1998), 206-207.112 Carl F. H. Henry, “Reflections on a Nation in Transition,” Interpretation 30, no. 1 (January 1976): 57.

32Nixon’s Enduring Friendship with Billy Graham

Throughout his political life, and continuing to the end of his life, Nixon kept a close

friendship with revered evangelist Billy Graham. Graham actually met Nixon through Nixon’s

parents, who knew Graham through attendance at one of his rallies. Graham and Nixon became

close friends during Nixon’s political rise, and Graham all but endorsed Nixon during his 1960

campaign for the presidency.113 Nixon, in turn, contributed an article in 1962, titled “A Nation’s

Faith in God,” to Billy Graham’s magazine Decision, and both before and during his presidency

spoke at several of his rallies.114 The two often talked about theology and politics, each asking the

other’s advice on many occasions regarding a broad range of topics and ideas, but questions still

existed about Nixon’s inner spiritual life such that the editor of Decision, in soliciting the article,

asked Nixon’s staff to focus on his personal testimony. “We would like to know a little of his

own inner spiritual being,” wrote Wirt, as well as his “testimony with regard to his own spiritual

relationship with Jesus Christ.”115 Throughout their relationship, Nixon and Graham exchanged

books, sent each other news items, and often talked at length on the phone.

Nixon was perhaps the most open with Graham of anyone in his life when discussing

religious matters, though Graham apparently did not know just what Nixon’s “inner spiritual

being” was in 1962. This is because Nixon and Graham were genuinely close friends who liked

113 Graham wrote and sent to Life Magazine an editorial endorsing Nixon but decided to withdraw it at the last minute. Graham had asked several pro-Nixon senators about the prudence of writing such an article, and nearly all voiced their opposition to Graham. Despite Henry Luce’s objections, Graham decided to write another article “on why every citizen has a responsibility to vote.” A copy of the draft article is found in Vice President: General Correspondence Grady, Daniel B. - Grainger, Isaac B., box 299, Pre- presidential Papers, Yorba Linda.114 Nixon’s article appeared in the November 1962 issue. In the article, Nixon wrote that he, his father, and his two brothers attended a revival service led by evangelist Paul Rader and “joined hundreds of others that night in making our personal commitments to Christian service.” Nixon changed the phrase to “Christ and Christian service” before the article was printed in Decision, however. See Jonathan Aitken, Nixon: A Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993), 48; “Nixon’s Brand of Quakerism De-emphasizes Pacifism,” New York Times (Jan. 26, 1969): 54; and Richard Nixon to Sherwood Wirt, letter, Aug. 23, 1962, Statements for Publication - RN, box 1 (Campaign 1962: Speeches, Public Statements, and Schedules), Pre-presidential Papers, Yorba Linda.115 Sherwood Wirt to Richard Nixon, letter, July 31, 1962, Statements for Publication, box 1, Pre- presidential Papers, Yorba Linda.

33each other as people and trusted one another completely. Graham felt comfortable advising

Nixon in 1956, “Very frankly, you are in need of a boost in Protestant religious circles.”116 He

provided Nixon opportunities to publicly express his faith in venues that would imply that Nixon

adhered to orthodox Christianity as Graham did. On the surface, in fact, Nixon’s correspondence

with Graham gives the appearance that both men did share the same beliefs. Nixon gave money

to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; he ordered subscriptions for magazines that wrote

from an orthodox standpoint; and he spoke with Graham as a close confidant. In fact, if an

observer who had never heard of Watergate were to read through Nixon and Graham’s

correspondence from the 1950s to the 1990s, he would have great difficulty detecting any

alteration in the form of the two’s friendship.

Yet Graham had been hurt and embarrassed by Nixon’s actions, relating that he had

become “physically sick” learning of the language used in the White House tapes.117 After Nixon

resigned the presidency in ignominy, and during the time in which the revelations of Nixon’s

profanity emerged, Graham felt momentarily betrayed and embarrassed by a man he felt he had

never truly known. But upon examination of the men’s correspondence both before and after

Watergate, there is no permanent discemable change in the relationship; this, however, could just

as easily be explained by Graham’s character as by Nixon’s. Graham was no more guarded with

Nixon after Watergate than he was before, and gave no indication that his relationship with Nixon

had changed. Nixon continued to contribute personally to the Billy Graham Evangelistic

Association as he did during his presidency.118 He wrote to the Reverend John Pollack that he

intended to keep their relationship low-profile because he did not want to taint Graham’s ministry

with his own bad reputation:

116 Billy Graham to Richard Nixon, letter, June 4, 1956, Vice President: General Correspondence, Grady, Daniel B. - Grainger, Isaac B., box 299, Pre-presidential Papers, Yorba Linda.117 Billy Graham, Just As I Am: The Autobiography o f Billy Graham (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), 542.118 See, for example, Graham to Nixon, letters, Sept. 10, 1975, and Feb. 19, 1991, Rev. Billy Graham, box 1, Post-presidential Correspondence, Yorba Linda.

34I realize that Watergate was a difficult time for Billy. ... Under the circumstances, I appreciated the fact that despite the great pressures from many of his peers, Billy did not waver in his personal friendship. I deliberately did not see him often during that period... ,119

Graham, on a number of occasions (often through journalistic columns), made public

calls for the nation to forgive Nixon of his past misdeeds, thus partially laying the ground for

Nixon’s eventual return to the national spotlight. Curiously, Graham’s letters to Nixon could be

interpreted for their uncertainty of Nixon’s religious beliefs. Graham wrote in his autobiography:

I had some misgivings about Nixon’s religious understanding, based on what glimpses I g o t... I’ve never doubted the reality of his spiritual concern, though, or the sincerity of his identification with the evangelical position toward the authority of the Bible and the person of Christ. He told me, “I believe the Bible from cover to cover.”120

Graham continued to press Nixon privately, however, relating in one letter that, “A

Richard Nixon touched by the power of Christ could help lead this nation in a spiritual awakening

that it desperately needs if it is to survive.”121 It is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to conclusively

determine what Nixon did believe, as he placed so high a premium on private belief. Graham, a

minister, could likely detect insincere religiosity, and his responses to Nixon perhaps indicate that

Graham felt Nixon was not a true born-again Christian as he was.

Nixon considered Graham extraordinarily intelligent, enough so to be a capable

president, and able to evaluate personalities as complex as Nixon’s.122 Yet an interview Nixon

gave with Frank Gannon in 1983 raises serious questions about the actual nature of his belief, as

told to Graham. Gannon asked Nixon bluntly: “When you went to college, your mother warned

you about losing your faith. Did you?” Nixon responded:

119 Nixon to Pollock, Dec. 30, 1986, Yorba Linda. Nixon wrote narrative responses to Pollock’s questions; Pollock was preparing what would become a biography of Billy Graham titled Billy Graham: Evangelist to the World (1979).120 Graham, Just As I Am, 544.121 Billy Graham to Richard Nixon, letter, Aug. 17, 1974, Rev. Billy Graham, box 1, Post-presidential Correspondence, Yorba Linda.122 Richard Nixon, notes on Billy Graham to Life Productions re: “Questions for President Nixon for biographical film on Billy Graham,” letter, Sept. 3, 1990, ibid.

35I would say in terms that she would describe it, yes. In terms that both she and my father were Quakers, but fundamentalist Quakers. Some of the Quakers are not too fundamentalist. They’re tolerant of almost anything. But they [Nixon’s parents] believed in the literal interpretation of the “Bible.” Every word of it is true, including the whale story, et cetera. And, consequently, she was even concerned, for example, about my reading Tolstoy. She didn’t think that sounded that good.123

This statement raises questions about what Nixon meant when he told Graham he

believed the Bible “cover to cover.” Whether hypocrisy, Nixon’s own theological uncertainty, or

a misinterpretation on Graham’s part is perhaps undeterminable. Other statements Nixon made in

the interview related the extent to which his religious viewpoint diverged from orthodox

Christianity, but leave the question as to what he did believe frustratingly opaque. Nixon was

careful to hedge his statements so as not to alienate believers at opposite spectrums, but,

interestingly, the way in which he hedged reveals that his terms of religious belief—or boundaries

of belief and unbelief—contain remnants of the fundamentalist-modemist debates of the early

twentieth century. Gannon had asked Nixon what the impact of his course at Whittier with

professor Herschel Coffin had been, referencing in particular a portion from “What Can I

Believe?” (The segment was that which appeared in Nixon’s Memoirs.) After he finished reading

the portion aloud, Nixon related, “Well, as you can tell from hearing that, that that would be

inconsistent with what those who believe in the literal interpretation of the ‘Bible’ would say.”

Continuing, he said it would be

inconsistent with what my good friend Billy Graham and some of those who are called born-again fundamentalist Christians, would say. Inconsistent in a literal way, but not in a broader sense, because, to be quite candid with you, I would say that I am not one that says that everything that Darwin wrote is correct. I am not one that says it is impossible to have had the theory of creation being a fact. It could have happened that way. My view is that it probably didn’t happen that way, but I am certainly not going to fault those who believe otherwise. So, and as I see, one can be a good Christian without necessarily believing in the physical resurrection.

123 Richard Nixon-Frank Gannon interviews, Day 1, Tape 2, 01:23:21, accessed at http://www.libs.uga.edu/media/collections/nixon/index.html.

36This statement is as revealing of Nixon’s beliefs as he would allow, and reveals,

among other things, that he retained the modernistic interpretation of religious belief that he had

been taught nearly fifty years previously. He placed the Christian spectrum as stretching between

fundamentalism and Darwinism. And he clearly came down on the side of a metaphorical, rather

than a literal, understanding of Christianity and its scriptures. His “broader sense” of religiosity

was that which he spoke of earlier: the teachings of Jesus and faith in a supreme being.

Finally, Nixon’s philosophy of the Bible requires attention. Nixon made an effort to

pronounce the Bible in quotation marks when speaking of it in the interview and in other places,

which—similar to what he described in his college essay—might indicate that he did not view it

as authoritative or received from God. When describing his early reading habits, Nixon noted

that: “The other thing we [his family] read was the ‘Bible,’ and I don’t say this because it’s

expected to be said, but the ‘Bible’ is not just a great book. It’s—it’s a great collection of

books.”124 Nixon recalled that, at Whittier, one of his professors, Albert Upton, taught him that

“the greatest book ever written was ‘Ecclesiastes.’125

In light of obvious theological differences with his evangelical counterparts, Nixon’s easy

familiarity with evangelicals such as Billy Graham might seem baffling. But that association was

perhaps more a matter of sensibility than of theological agreement. Troublingly, Nixon refused to

express his own beliefs more than superficially, and most likely never would have expressed

those beliefs publicly. When Gannon noted an “almost mystical undercurrent” to Nixon’s

discussion of the China mission, Nixon replied (when asked if he felt one of his life’s purposes

124 Nixon-Gannon interviews, Day 1, Tape 1, 01:08:10.125 Ibid. A prime example of how Nixon’s religiosity was misinterpreted by conservative evangelicals as orthodox Christianity occurred, in fact, while Nixon was president. Nixon attempted to contact the publishers of a Bible whose translations were theologically conservative. Nixon wrote to Dr. Oswald Hoffman of the Lutheran Hour, for example, to commend his and the American Bible Society’s translation. Hoffman had sent Nixon an advance copy of Ecclesiastes, which Nixon praised for the “profound meaning and depth of the philosopher’s views.” Nixon’s words alone might appear suspect with closer scrutiny, but his mere association with the American Bible Society and the Lutheran Hour spoke loudly. See RM1 Bibles l-l-71/[12/72], Religious Matters, box 18, White House Central File, College Park.

37was to “open the way to China”), “if I did feel it, I’d never admit it.”126 Nixon felt personally

comfortable around evangelicals and other theologians that supported him, and viewed their

support as a building block for the “answer of the spirit” he believed it was his mission to provide

to the nation. While certain features of the Nixon-Graham relationship strongly suggest hypocrisy

on Nixon’s part, the complexities of Nixon’s personality must be taken into account as well.

Some appearances of hypocrisy may be judged incidental rather than deliberate because of his

personal desire to keep Graham’s friendship. Nixon’s religious actions must be evaluated so as to

retain a sense of perspective and explanatory power; they must be viewed neither uncritically nor

with such skepticism that disregards all of his actions as duplicitous.

III. NIXON AND THE MEANING OF HISTORY, LEADERSHIP,AND DEMOCRACY

While he was vice president, Nixon wrote an introduction to a book by Ralph de

Toledano, a longtime friend and confidant of Whittaker Chambers and, like Chambers, a

committed anticommunist. Nixon and de Toledano became friends during the Hiss Case, and de

Toledano later wrote two biographies about him, one in 1960 and another in 1969. De Toledano’s

book Lament for a Generation partly paralleled Chambers’s Witness in its account of the choices

made by the generations living between the 1930s and 1950s that led them either into

Communism or against it. Nixon’s introduction would have been expected, as he also reviewed

Chambers’s book in 1952. In that review, Nixon noted that “the verdict of history” would find

Witness to be a worthwhile book, and he expounded on how history might reach its

conclusions:127

If history is a dialectical process, then the diversity and multiplicity of a free society are necessary to progress—which may account for the political and social stagnation which afflicts the Soviet Union.128

126 Nixon-Gannon interviews, Day 5, Tape 4,00:27:31.127 Richard Nixon, “Plea for an Anti-Communist Faith,” Saturday Review (May 24, 1952): 12.128 Richard M. Nixon, “Forward,” in Lament for a Generation by Ralph de Toledano (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1960), xii.

38

Nixon’s understanding of the historical process and leadership bespeaks his religious

philosophy. Searching for evidence of Nixon’s religious convictions by listing the books he read

or the periods of history that interested him unearths little of consequence for this investigation,

but his philosophy of history can be interpreted to much benefit. Historian Peter W. Dickson

interpreted Henry Kissinger’s philosophy of history to similar effect in his Kissinger and the

Meaning o f History.129 By tracing Kissinger’s intellectual roots and agnosticism to his constant

appeal to history as the final arbiter of moral judgment, Dickson placed Kissinger within an

emerging secular era that sought to discover meaning in its interpretations and constructions of

history rather than a transcendent God of judgment. Dickson’s analysis also moved Kissinger

closer to a traditionally Marxist understanding of the historical process, despite his professed

aversion to that intellectual system. Nixon’s understanding of history is strikingly similar to

Kissinger’s in many respects, and his appeals to and understanding of the historical process can

be analyzed for similar outlines of a religious philosophy.

In his introduction to Lament for a Generation, Nixon expressed most clearly how he

understood “crisis,” the term to which he often referred throughout his writings: “Only out of a

conflict of ideas and forces does man preserve his freedom. ... The struggle for freedom, however

small or large a part we play in it, is man’s most significant experience.”130 This conflict may be

fought on the field of politics but it is resolved in the pages of history. Nixon’s fascination with

history is well documented. He read all of Churchill’s volumes before meeting him in person, for

example, and was also fascinated by the works of Arnold Toynbee, Will Durant, Barbara

Tuchman, Edward Gibbon, and many others who presented history in a progressive or linear

fashion. His appeal to history as the future arbiter of current disputes assigns moral leadership the

role of furthering social progress, yet to be successful, that leadership must conform to the

129 The title for and analysis within this section owe their inspiration to Dickson. Dickson’s title, in turn, reflects the title of Kissinger’s undergraduate thesis.130 Nixon, “Forward” in Lament, xi.

39direction of history. Put differently, the historical process is autonomous from current action,

while current action can be found meaningful through the judgment of history. Nixon ascribed

not only significance but meaning to the historical process and understood it in moral terms.

History was a field of action in which God’s purpose could be striven for and revealed in the

world.

This view is, of course, in direct contrast to William F. Buckley’s famous call for

conservatism to “stand athwart history yelling ‘Stop.’”131 Nixon’s understanding of the direction

of history was both fatalistic and ideological; he ascribed significance to understanding and

working within the direction of history. Buckley, on the other hand, viewed histoiy from the

perspective of Catholic tradition; morality informed all action, even if such action required

bucking what appeared to be an inevitable trend. Nixon believed that Communism must be

opposed, but that it should be opposed strategically and pragmatically. His moral understanding

of history put a premium on the possible, not the desirable. Nixon’s understanding of the goal (or

direction) of history can be fruitfully evaluated for its religious content. The influence of two

specific thinkers, Whittaker Chambers and Arnold Toynbee, is illuminating for this examination.

Nixon’s interaction with Whittaker Chambers during the Hiss case provides an adequate

starting point. Nixon’s relationship with Chambers began almost by accident but helped to

solidify his philosophical understanding of history. It also exposed him to a more sophisticated

understanding of foreign policy in terms of a moral direction of history. The two men met during

the chaos of legal research that the House Committee on Un-American Activities was

undertaking in order to prove that Alger Hiss knew Chambers. Nixon only gradually came to trust

Chambers, but eventually valued him as much for his friendship as for his religio-political

insights. Chambers likewise appreciated Nixon’s intelligence and political talent, but saw these

abilities as directly stemming from Nixon’s morality and ability to think ideologically.

131 George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 152.

40Why Chambers might have admired Nixon is revealed in his review of Arnold

Toynbee’s Study o f History—a review published in the March 1947 issue of Time announcing the

abridged version of six of Toynbee’s twelve-volume work. Toynbee’s work was a voice calling

for “God as an active force in history,” Chambers wrote; it laid the groundwork for an anti-

Communist faith, in which “the goal of histoiy ... is the Kingdom of God.”132 In similar vein,

Nixon wrote at Whittier that “the modem world will find a real resurrection in the teachings of

Jesus.”133 Toynbee’s interpretation brought forth the notion that an ailing sick society could only

be rescued by a “creative minority,” which was also quite possibly the “losing side” (as Chambers

referred to the Christian West) in the battle against international Communism. Toynbee’s

interpretation was correct in Chambers’s opinion as well because it placed psychic factors rather

than materialistic ones at the fore of historical progress; societies are moved by ideas and forceful

thinkers, not by economic forces. Thus, the “savior” who appears on the political scene, and who

understands the crisis of civilization, has the task of leading society toward its “transfiguration”

when it strives toward the ethic of Christ.134 It is probable that Nixon viewed his duty in these

terms, given his repeated emphasis on spiritual leadership and struggle for peace and freedom.

There is no evidence to suggest that Chambers read Nixon’s “What Can I Believe?”

essays, or that he saw the germ of similarity to Toynbee’s thoughts in Nixon’s other early

writings; yet Chambers did perceive an intellectual depth in his discussions with Nixon. It is also

unclear whether Nixon had read all twelve volumes of Toynbee’s study before he met Chambers,

although he did read them during his “wilderness years” of 1963-1968.135 Regardless, Chambers

either recommended Toynbee to Nixon, brought the historian up in conversation, or Nixon was

already disposed toward the elements of Toynbee’s theory of history that would provide an

132 Terry Teachout, ed., Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism o f Whittaker Chambers, 1931—1959 (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1989), 142. Chambers’s review is reprinted in Ghosts, a collection of Chambers’s journalism compiled and edited by Teachout.133 Nixon, “What Can I Believe?” 26.134 Ibid., 148.135 Aitken, Nixon: A Life, 336.

41intellectual basis for the struggle against Communism. Nixon considered Chambers a valuable

resource for understanding the dynamics of this struggle, asked Chambers for book

recommendations “not only on communism but on history at large,” and worked diligently to

understand the deeper nature of the issues.136 It is plausible that if Nixon had not read Toynbee

but had expressed congruent views, Chambers would have introduced Nixon, given that

Chambers considered him as the hope of the right.137 In any event, Toynbee seems to have made

an deep impression on Nixon, as will be further discussed.

Nixon greatly admired Chambers and continued to quote him in his later books. In his

1952 review of Witness for the Saturday Review, he wrote: “ Witness is the first book of its kind

which acknowledges the great hold of Communism on the human mind—which does not dismiss

it as a cellar conspiracy which can be abolished by police methods. Communism is evil because it

denies God and defies man.” The review’s title, “Plea for an Anti-Communist Faith,” is indicative

of both his understanding of Witness and his own desire for “a faith based not on materialism but

on a recognition of God.”138 Nixon did not further explain the tenets of this faith, but it is clear

that he believed the highest aspiration of a society would only be realized through spiritual

development; as he was taught at Whittier, spiritual concerns lay higher on the process of creative

evolution than materialistic philosophy.

Chambers biographer Sam Tanenhaus believes that Nixon saw and admired qualities in

Chambers that reflected his own.139 While Chambers did air some reservations about Nixon in a

136 Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (New York: Random House, Modem Library Edition, 1998), 454.137 See Chambers to Buckley, letter, June 12, 1957, in William F. Buckley Jr., Odyssey o f a Friend (Washington, DC: Regnery Books, 1987), 177. Chambers described Nixon’s “greatness of grasp” in understanding “history as tragedy” and the true nature of struggle. Nixon “knows what is at stake,” and within him Chambers perceived “the seed of growth.”138 Nixon, “Plea,” 12-13. Journalistic practice often assigns the writing of titles to editors; Nixon may not have coined this title, yet the article’s argument clearly places Communism as the antithesis of Western Christianity.139 Tanenhaus quotes Nixon’s description of Chambers found in Six Crises: “Like most men of quality, he made a deeper impression personally than he did in public. Within minutes the caricature drawn by rumormongers of the drunkard, the unstable and unsavory character, faded away. Here was a man of

42letter to William F. Buckley Jr., Nixon and Chambers were both Quakers and held generally

compatible worldviews.140 When Nixon showed Chambers he was aware of a “problem of

history,” he manifested traits that Chambers thought were crucial in a leader. He and Chambers

both felt that works of history could speak to the present, and that history repeats itself because

human nature is unchanging. Their studies of history taught them that great leaders (“saviors”)

appear from time to time, yet always eventually failing to fulfill their mission. As Chambers

wrote in his Time review, “only one transfiguring Savior has ever appeared in human history:

Christ—the highest symbol of man’s triumph through ordeal and death.”141 The meaning of

history, then, was to be found in “psychic” factors, not materialistic ones, as Chambers wrote

regarding Toynbee’s Study o f History and as Nixon wrote about Witness. Man’s response to the

challenges of other, competing ideologies was the driving process of history.

Furthermore, Nixon and Chambers held generally similar views toward religion; both

men on occasion expressed what could be interpreted as a metaphorical rather than a literal

understanding of the Bible and a conception of religion as an instrument in an ideological

struggle. For example, Chambers once told his children, “Bethlehem ... is our hearts.”142 He also

compared himself to Lazarus after emerging from the Communist underground. Lazarus,

extraordinary intelligence, speaking from great depth of understanding; a sensitive, shy man who had turned from complete dedication to Communism to a new religious faith and a kind of fatalism about the future. One thing that especially impressed me was his almost absolute passion for personal privacy. He seemed particularly to want to spare his children any embarrassment from what he had hoped was a closed chapter in his life. His wife, Esther, was exactly like him in this respect.” See Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers, 240; also Nixon, Six Crises, 22.140 Buckley, Odyssey, 287. Chambers’s doubts were perhaps aired in temporary despair, for the archival materials reveal that he wrote to Nixon on February 2, 1961, encouraging him to run for the California governorship. Chambers, knowing his health was failing, wrote from the heart: “Almost from the first day we met (think, it is already twelve years ago), I sensed in you some quality, very deep-going, difficult to identify in the world’s glib way, but good, and meaningful for you and the multitudes of others. ... Service is your life. You must serve.” (Chambers to Nixon, letter, Feb. 2, 1961, Vice President: General Correspondence, Chamberlain, Charles E. - Chandler, Dr. L. R., box 141, Pre-presidential Papers, Yorba Linda.)141 Teachout, Ghosts, 148.142 Chambers, Witness, 75.

43incidentally, is a motif Arnold Toynbee uses in his Study o f History to represent the act of an

individual returning to society from a state of withdrawal or inward meditation.143

Chambers’s calling was to expose what he considered the moral failures of Communism

while at the same time rallying the West toward spiritual renewal. He considered Communism to

be, above all, a religious movement. And, as he had been articulating since he began writing for

Time, the only way to fight against one religious philosophy was with another, better religious

philosophy.144 Chambers furthermore emphasized the same themes of crisis and tragedy in the

world-historical setting that Nixon emphasized in his writings. In fact, the “tragedy of history” of

the Hiss case was that good men like Hiss had been led astray, in the end destroying themselves,

Chambers believed.145

Communism, Chambers thought, was effective insofar as it masqueraded as goodness.

Evil made this masquerading possible, enabling the molding of a society’s ideas and thus guiding

a people through history without their knowing it.146 Chambers’sconcept of the Devil, as

described in his well-known Time essay of the same title, was of a being that learned at the dawn

of the Enlightenment how to trick humanity into doing evil while believing it was doing good.147

To Chambers, the accompanying crisis of history was that so many, especially fellow

conservatives, were so slow to grasp that reality. They failed to understand the direction of

history—a failure that, according to biographer Sam Tanenhaus, Chambers believed would hasten

them to their well-merited destruction.148 They were blind to the choice being demanded of them,

143 Chambers, Witness, 25. Chambers writes, “In 1937,1 began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.”144 While many of Chambers’s writings had wide influence, they were published unsigned according to the editorial policy of his department. Nevertheless, it is certain that he made Nixon aware of them once they became acquainted—although Nixon, with his wide reading and interest in the very matters Chambers was writing about, would doubtless have already read them. Literary critic Terry Teachout has consolidated and published many of Chambers’s anonymous writings in Ghosts.145 Chambers, Witness, 3.146 Whittaker Chambers, Cold Friday (New York: Random House, 1964), 79.147 See Whittaker Chambers, “The Devil,” in Teachout, ed., Ghosts, 166-174.148 Tanenhaus, Chambers, 488.

44the choice between God and Man. This, precisely, is how Nixon came to view Communism for

its emphasis on “materialism” rather than spiritual ideals.

Chambers was drawn to Gommunism because Communists were men of action who

understood the “drift of history” and were superb at navigating the currents, precisely because

they were not weighed down by principle or obligated to tradition. Nixon struck Chambers

because of his ability to grasp this complexity. Although viewed by conservatives with suspicion

for his “ideological flexibility,” Nixon’s tendency to view the world in terms of interests,

motivations, and historical forces rather than ideas unchained to reality allowed him to pursue

Communism through—in the minds of other conservatives—equally ideological tactics.149 Nixon

psychobiographer Fawn Brodie believed that Nixon took on Chambers’s description of the

“Stalinist mind” and with it the focus on politicization and power, but did not internalize

Chambers’s understanding of evil in the world or his messianism.150 Evidence indicates these

failures were not wholly the case for Nixon, however. Nixon did remain a pessimist with respect

to human nature, however, and understood human agency as a dependable avenue through which

social structures could be altered and lives improved. This focus on history as a revelator and a

guide to action has the irony of placing Nixon closer to Communist ideology than his career and

personality as a whole would indicate. Furthermore, his positive orientation to crisis and struggle

as the determinants of historical progress—though that progress is expressed in terms of returning

morality, order, and decency to the nation—make clear that Nixon used ideological tactics to

combat other ideologies.

It is also debatable whether Nixon’s philosophy contained no concept of messianism. His

interest in Toynbee’s writings bring this to light and are key to understanding what Nixon meant

by his religious sense of mission. Toynbee himself saw this in Nixon. Nixon took the occasion to

149 See, for example, Sarah Katherine Mergel, “A Report Card for Nixon: Conservative Intellectuals and the President” (PhD diss., George Washington University, 2007), 69. Mergel quotes Russell Kirk worrying about Nixon’s “tendency to be receptive ‘to new ideas of every description.’”150 Fawn M. Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping o f His Character (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), 207.

45write the eminent historian for his eightieth birthday, praising his work as having “placed

generations of men and women in [his] debt” and acknowledging his impact among “school

children as well as in the highest government circles.”151 This is likely an oblique reference to

Toynbee’s influence on Nixon. Toynbee replied to Nixon a week later, and his letter elucidates

Toynbee’s philosophy of leadership as well as demonstrates how Nixon was viewed by others,

including Toynbee himself, as an exemplary individual. The letter, minus salutation and closing,

reads:

I had the honor of meeting you at the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Harvard Business School. You were then Vice President and were the School’s guest of honor. It was only a glimpse, but I watched your deftness in dealing with people. If, by accident of birth, you had been bom a Greek or an Arab, I am sure you would have been a star muleteer or camel-rider, because these creatures are as hard to coax along as the most willful human beings. I also had some impression of your unbeatableness in pursuing any goal that you set for yourself. A French general is said to have complained that an English army won because it did not know when it had been beaten. I think you are like that, and I am sure that this is the spirit that the world needs. I will venture to offer a prayer which is, I believe, in everyone’s heart today. May God find in you the skillful, resourceful physician and the indefatigable, indomitable leader who will heal our world’s wounds. May God bless you and help you.152

This letter reflects both men’s belief in the secular importance of the self-driven

individual, adding a religious undertone to the importance of striving for a goal. Yet both Nixon

and Toynbee are frustratingly vague on why striving is important. Nevertheless, Nixon seems to

have been most affected by Toynbee’s theory of “Withdrawal and Return;” of all the portions of

Toynbee’s Study o f History, he brought it up repeatedly among friends and quoted or alluded to it

in his writings. The idea is that great individuals “pass first out of action into ecstasy and then out

of ecstasy into action on a new and higher plane.”153 Nixon felt his life experience validated the

theory and notes that his own “wilderness years” were such an occasion. In fact, Nixon begins

151 Richard Nixon to Arnold Toynbee, letter, April 12, 1969, Arnold Toynbee, box 16, White House Special, College Park.152 Arnold Toynbee to Richard Nixon, letter, April 16, 1969, ibid.153 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study o f History, abridged by D.C. Somervell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 217.

46“Wilderness” chapter of In the Arena with a description of Toynbee’s theory.154 Toynbee’s

thought resonated with Nixon because it focused on forces of history being shaped by great

individuals with overarching moral vision; it historicized mere “religion” while treating it as a

tool for higher uses. Above all, it was a practical guide to spiritual leadership or, as Toynbee

described, the “kindling of creative energy from soul to soul,” which Nixon sought to practice.155

As has been made clear, Nixon was fascinated by individuals with strong character and

moral fiber. Many of his public speeches voice concerns over “softness” of character that will

cause the Cold War to be lost. The great civilizations of Rome, Greece, and ancient Persia, for

example, “died ... not when they were weak and not when they were poor, but when they were

rich.... They died because as they became wealthy, they became soft... .”156 This softness was a

stage of spiritual decadence above all, but such decadence could be overcome through struggle

and an understanding of the world-historical crises that faced the nation. This is the meaning of

Nixon’s famous phrase in his first inaugural address, “to a crisis of spirit, we need an answer of

the spirit.”157 One of the clearest examples of Nixon’s ideal leader is presented in a letter Nixon

wrote to his friend Hobart Lewis, publisher of Reader’s Digest. Nixon was writing about U.S.

Naval Captain Jeremiah Denton, who, after eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, vowed to

write a book about his experiences. Denton was, Nixon wrote,

one of the most impressive men I have ever met. ... For four and a half years he lived in a cell in complete solitaiy without ever seeing another American. ... He is terribly concerned about the issue he discusses so perceptively in his letter— the moral and spiritual deterioration that he sees in America as a result of what he calls a ‘soft environment.’158

154 See Nixon, In the Arena, 26- 1̂5, esp. 26.155 Toynbee, Study o f History, 216.156 Richard Nixon, Remarks at Ceremonies Honoring Billy Graham in Charlotte, NC, Oct. 15, 1971, American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara.157 Richard Nixon, First Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1969, ibid.158 Richard Nixon to Hobart Lewis, letter, March 14, 1973, Hobart Lewis, box 11, White House Special File, College Park.

47Clearly, Nixon was highly interested in expounding on his theories of leadership,

history, and societal change with close acquaintances. On one occasion, Nixon discussed

Toynbee’s theory during a 1972 breakfast with Congressmen Hale Boggs and Gerald Ford. After

the breakfast he asked General Alexander Haig, then deputy assistant to the president, to find,

duplicate, and forward the passage on to the congressmen. After Haig found the passage, he sent

it to Nixon to review. Haig evidently had found the correct passage, and Nixon wrote on Haig’s

memo: “Send copies of this excerpt to Tricia, Julie, & Ed Cox (I talked to them about it at dinner)

... also send 2 copies to John Moore (our Irish Ambassador)—one for him & one for the Irish

Foreign Minister [Patrick Hillery].”159

The passage contained Toynbee’s theory of “Withdrawal and Return” arguing that

society is advanced through the leadership of individual demigods (Toynbee uses the term

“creative genius” or “creative personality”) who appear episodically throughout history to lead

their people toward spiritual fulfillment. This process is not restricted to one religion; it is meant

to indicate a spiritual state above all faith traditions. These individuals emerge from normal

humanity, and through a process of withdrawal from the general culture become transfigured into

a state of higher spirituality. This higher state endows them with a superhuman spiritual and

physical strength so as to lead the populace into a period of growth.

Haig copied only half of the passage to which Nixon had referred. Nixon alludes also to

the first section, titled “Society and the Individual,” of Toynbee’s chapter on the “Analysis of

Growth,” on a number of occasions. Indeed, a further study of Nixon’s theory of leadership, and

an examination of the traits he admired in leaders (including himself), suggests that Toynbee’s

message struck a chord in him. It is important to analyze just what Toynbee meant by his theory

159 Alexander Haig to Richard Nixon, action memorandum, July 29, 1972, Arnold Toynbee, box 16, White House Special File, College Park. Haig found the passage in the abridged version of Toynbee’s Study o f History (1947).

48of leadership to illuminate the depth of Nixon’s thinking on the matter as well as the religious

sense he attached to the term.

Toynbee saw society as a “field of action,” in which “the source of all action is in the

individuals composing it.”160 Those individuals who lead society, however, “are more than mere

men. They can work what to men seem miracles because they themselves are superhuman in a

literal and no mere metaphorical sense.”161 In describing the emergence of that individual into

society, Toynbee quotes French philosopher Henri Bergson:

But, just as men of genius have been found to push back the bounds of the human intelligence ... so there have arisen privileged souls who have felt themselves related to all souls, and who, instead of remaining within the limits of their group and keeping to the [restricted] solidarity which has been established by nature, have addressed themselves to humanity in general in an elan of love. The apparition of each of these souls has been like the creation of a new species composed of one unique individual.162

Again, Toynbee refers to Bergson when describing the genius as his personality is being

formed during the withdrawal from society:

The soul of the great mystic does not come to a halt at the [mystical] ecstasy as though that were the goal of the journey. The ecstasy may indeed be called a state of repose, but it is the repose of a locomotive standing in a station under steam pressure with its movement continuing as a stationary throbbing while it waits for the moment to make a new leap forward. ... His desire is with God’s help to complete the creation of the human species.163

On a number of occasions—both in Nixon’s college essay and in his later books and

other writings—Nixon exhibited an surprisingly consistent affinity for those leaders who

superhumanly overcame difficult situations and whose personal discipline and courage made

them famous. Yet Toynbee’s philosophy also occasioned a great deal of historical fatalism in

Nixon as well as possible antagonism toward non-supporters. The “creative personality,”

Toynbee taught, must be successful in transforming the “social milieu” of the “inert uncreative

160 Toynbee, Study o f History, 209.161 Ibid., 212.162 Ibid. Toynbee notes that his quote comes from Bergson’s Les Deux Sources de la Morale et de la Religion.163 Ibid.

49mass” or risk “los[ing] the will to live.”164 As Nixon’s daughter Tricia explained as Nixon was

considering running for President in 1967, “If you don’t run, Daddy, you really will have nothing

to live for.”165 Nixon explained that he “had a fatalistic, almost deterministic, view of history—

that history makes the man more than the man makes history.”166

But if Nixon was attracted to Chambers’s version of ideological struggle through

existential crisis, and if Nixon venerated individuals with the moral fiber to overcome near­

impossible circumstances, how can this contradiction be explained other than through a sense of

historical forces at work? History brought creative personalities to the fore. As Nixon explained

over one year later, in his first inaugural address:

Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries. This can be such a moment. Forces now are converging that make possible, for the first time, the hope that many of man’s deepest aspirations can at last be realized.167

Catching the drift of history and correctly judging its direction were certainly Nixon’s

strengths; what is less clear is the place of God and tradition in his philosophy. This new

philosophy, occurring in a time of spiritual crisis, is vividly demonstrated in John F. Kennedy’s

inaugural address; ironically, its “theme of sacrifice and toil, with no assurance from on high,” fit

better within a Marxist framework that places its “faith in the course of history.”168 Indeed, Henry

Kissinger and Nixon both approached peacemaking as a “historical process” and not as a

“permanent achievement.”169 “We are moving with history,” Kissinger wrote in 1972,

objectifying foreign policy as “anticipating the movement of history” rather than as a meeting of

164 Toynbee, Study o f History, 213.165 Nixon, Memoirs, 292.166 Ibid., 291.167 Nixon, First Inaugural. Emphasis added.168 Peter W. Dickson, Kissinger and the Meaning o f History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 11, 12.169 Dickson, Kissinger, 22.

50specific, well-defined goals.170 Both men valued struggle through crisis over “morality and

justice” in a world of conflicting powers.171 In the end, meaning could be gleaned from the

seemingly “endless historical process” by shaping the future and forcefully “imposing order” on a

chaotic world.172

Nixon made an intriguing comment on the nature of history during his 1983 interview

with former staffer Frank Gannon. When Gannon asked Nixon how he thought history would

judge him, Nixon replied,

Here is something we have to understand about—what is history? How does history judge John Kennedy? How is history going to judge Lyndon Johnson? How is it going to judge Richard Nixon? That is beside the point. You’ve got to find out what history is. ... Winston Churchill said, “History is going to treat me well, because I intend to write it.” And he did. When we talk about history, what we have to recognize—that history is not a single impartial judge. The verdict of history is rendered by a jury of historians.173

Is Nixon saying, then, that he believed that the writing of history was simply a subjective

construction, an imaginative fiction? He most likely meant that the process of struggle is carried

out through the writing of history, which does not occur from a privileged moral vantage point

somehow outside of history itself. Nixon appealed, as he did many times elsewhere within the

interview, to history as existing within the domain of power politics and thus being subject not to

higher morality but to the ability of the historian to shape the future.

Like Nixon, Kissinger accepted Toynbee’s view of history as manifesting progress

through “spiritual struggle.” Yet both men differed on what this meant; for Kissinger, history

could not produce moral values because those values that survive must therefore be the best.174

Yet without religious tradition, how could one judge values through history? Nixon, on the other

hand, continued to interpret God as the final arbiter of the historical process while at the same

170 Dickson, Kissinger, 22. “Moving with history” quoted by Dickson from Kissinger, U.S Foreign Policy for the 1970s—The Emerging Structure of Peace, speech, Feb. 9, 1972, 215.

Dickson, Kissinger, 27. Ibid.

171

172

173 Nixon-Gannon interviews, Day 9, Tape 4, 00:28:15.174 Dickson, Kissinger, 33.

51time holding to a view of religion that placed its use and results, not its devotional practices, at

the fore. Nixon, admittedly fatalistic about the historical process, referred to his own political

experience when he stated earlier in the Gannon interview that his early political career “was one

of those cases where history made the man and the man was able to make history as a result.”175

IV. NIXON AND CIVIL RELIGION

Nixon’s seemingly pragmatic view of religion opens him to the charge that he did not

actually support the traditional Christianity he came to be associated with. By keeping high-

profile friendships with Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale throughout his political career,

Nixon could easily be accused of “using” religion—and, thus, even religious figures

themselves—for political purposes, rather than giving the impression his beliefs sincerely aligned

with theirs. A primary framework through which this type of criticism of Nixon is expressed is

known as “civil religion,” a term referring specifically to Nixon’s incorporation of religion into a

larger framework of national purpose.176

Before investigating the application of this framework to Nixon’s specific case, it will be

worth our time to explain what exactly we mean by “civil religion” and how the term has come to

be understood and used over time. The concept of civil religion refers to the public, outward-

directed appeal to religious belief—an aggregation of a president’s (or other political leader’s)

public religious actions. Whether defined as society’s “cohesive sentiment,” “civic faith,” or even

as broadly as the “American way of life,” civil religion refers to public, observable phenomena, at

least in terms of national ceremony and self-reflection.177 It concerns the religious references

175 Nixon-Gannon interviews, Day 5, Tape 4, 00:27:31.176 Martin Marty contends that civil religion “remains chiefly the product of the scholars’ world; the man on the street would be surprised to learn of its existence or to know that he is one of its professors.” (Quoted from Martin Marty, “Two Kinds of Two Kinds of Civil Religion,” in Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones, eds., American Civil Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1974): 141.177 Pierard and Linder, Civil Religion, vii.

52made (usually by presidents) during public occasions such as the Fourth of July, Memorial

Day, or other times of national significance.

The starting point for most analyses of civil religion is Abraham Lincoln; his religious

references during the Civil War were later noted (most famously in a 1967 article by sociologist

Robert Bellah, civil religion’s “founder”) for their peculiar usage. The way Lincoln used religious

symbolism to confer meaning on the war was, according to Bellah, “Christian without having to

do with the Christian church.”178 This peculiarity led Bellah to argue that Lincoln’s

conceptualization of the nation and its moral purpose, as well as his vision of a unified American

past through his addresses during and after the Civil War, constituted a special kind of religion

that borrowed from, but did not come out of, specific religious denominations.179

Following in Lincoln’s footsteps, other American presidents, most notably John F.

Kennedy, applied similar civil religious language to their particular agendas, but, as Bellah notes,

with mixed results. The religious language of the public sphere, he argued, encompasses broader

themes of religiosity than one would find in a gathering of like-minded, homogeneous persons.180

Sociologist Robert Wuthnow’s analysis of American religion since World War II

provides a helpful backdrop for understanding how civil religion is used today. He notes that

while the generation of theologians before World War II saw God as equally active within

178 Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” in Richey and Jones, eds., American Civil Religion, 32.179 Bellah writes on p. 21 of his essay that “there actually exists alongside of and rather clearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and well-institutionalized civil religion in America.” Some have argued that civil religion is therefore simply “religion in general,” devoid of any real creeds, while others, such as Will Herberg, have argued that civil religion becomes idolatrous when it competes with revealed religion. In particular, Herberg argues that once civil religion begins to claim “ultimacy” or “absoluteness” over the biblical creeds from which it draws most of its metaphors, allusions, and symbolism, it becomes idolatrous. Herberg doubts that civil religion, however much it is idealized, can actually become a force for unifying all Americans. (Will Herberg, “America’s Civil Religion: What It Is and Whence It Comes,” in Richey and Jones, eds., American Civil Religion, 86-87.)180 Along with a focus on civil religion in general has come attention on the actual styles of civil religion practiced by the various American presidents. Although Bellah used Lincoln and Kennedy as his prime examples to demonstrate the existence of civil religion, other observers have taken Bellah’s concept further by analyzing each president’s civil religious “character” in terms of the established civil religion models. Thus, civil religion assumes a sense of given-ness, with each “character” (including Lincoln) now being appreciated for his novel civil religious approach. Students of civil religion see in the presidents different character traits than would be noticed in a study of an individual’s private beliefs.

53individuals and society, the postwar theologians preferred to see God and his Kingdom as

“over against” that society, and “not possible to realize on earth.”181 There then emerged “a

relatively sharp, consistent tendency toward differentiating the spiritual realm from the life of

active commitment that this realm itself enjoined.”182 It is partly due to this difference that

conservatives and liberals began, during the Civil Rights Movement, to realign into the two

distinct political groups that they are today. The Vietnam War further encouraged this division,

spawning a “new breed” of clergy who favored religious activism.

As a result of this emerging divide, interpretations of civil religion similarly diverged,

reflecting the two political groups’ differing views of the nation’s goals and purpose.183 As we

shall later see, these interpretations are a prime reason why each political group became so deeply

divided in their criticism of, or praise for, the manner in which Nixon presented his religion

publicly to the nation.

According to Wuthnow, conservative civil religion centers around America’s Judeo-

Christian heritage, its chosen-ness as a nation, and the contributions of its founders. It is a less

self-critical view which emphasizes the nation’s positive qualities while deemphasizing the need

for reform. Liberal civil religion, on the other hand, removes attention from the past and focuses

the nation’s present responsibility for peace and social justice; it emphasizes America’s

interdependence with the world and uses few biblical injunctions, unless those injunctions reflect

“more universal appeals.”184 Liberal civil religion focuses especially on solutions to nuclear war

and views peacemaking as the highest ideal.185 National pride is seen as a hindrance to religious

work in the world. Instead of emphasizing America’s legitimacy, this strain emphasizes “biblical

passages about the oppression of the poor, the arrogance of power, and the idolatry of military

181 Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring o f American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 50.182 Ibid.183 Marty, “Two Kinds,” 142-145.184 Wuthnow, Restructuring, 251.185 Ibid., 251-252.

54might.”186 brought forth either criticism or praise for the manner in which Nixon presented his

religion publicly to the nation.

Church historian Martin Marty’s article “Two Kinds of Two Kinds of Civil Religion”

[s/c] expounds upon the two existing interpretations of civil religion noted by Wuthnow and

others. To illuminate his point, he uses terms traditipnally used by theologians since at least the

mid-twentieth century. Behind Bellah’s ideas, Marty saw the levers and pulleys that mobilized

the American populace along almost-subconscious religious appeals. These appeals, he believed,

were made by leaders using one of two approaches: the priestly and the prophetic. Making

Bellah’s analysis explicit, Marty demonstrates through this model his belief that Americans are

motivated by their underlying religious conceptions of their state. Aware of this, American

leaders—the country’s “public theologians”—operate in their preferred framework (either

priestly or prophetic) to mobilize the people.

According to Marty, the “priest” is positive, uplifts the nation, and treats the nation as if it

were its own transcendent reality. On the other hand, the “prophet” approaches the nation in the

manner of an Old Testament prophet—subjecting national policies to a higher authority.

President Nixon was the ultimate priest, while his political opponent in the 1972 presidential

election, George McGovern, was a prophet.187 That is, Nixon seemed to praise the nation and take

its goodness for granted, while McGovern called for national repentance for its past arrogance.

The problem, Marty notes, is that priests are better at appealing to the people, but tend to exalt the

nation at the expense of outside enemies. Prophets, on the other hand, view the nation as its own

enemy.

Like Wuthnow, Marty injected political overtones into the debate by opining that

different civil religious interpretations follow party lines. He wrote, for example, that when Nixon

made his civil religious appeals, those of the opposite party “[struck] out in rage against the

186 Wuthnow, Restructuring, 252-253.187 Marty, “Two Kinds,” 142.

55Nixonian interpretation or heresy and point[ed] to the existence of a true civil religion

somewhere else.”188

Before turning to our discussion of Nixon as examined through the lens of civil religion,

it is important to understand the controversy surrounding the term. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow

notes that the use of religious terminology reflects reality on one level, but the “Great Divide”

that occurred during the upheavals of the 1960s seemed to be a political realignment above all.189

Even Bellah admitted as much in response to a later article by a scholar (James Mathisen)

attempting to make sense of the civil religion debate. In response to the scholar’s article, Bellah

said he “was particularly dismayed by the strong negative reaction” his landmark 1967 article

received. Yet, two paragraphs into his response, he called his original article “deeply critical,”

and continued, saying it “was an effort to argue that the civil religion required opposition to the

Vietnam War, not support for it.”190 This is not to say that Bellah’s pre-Nixon critique was left-

wing or right-wing, for opposition to the Vietnam War crossed party lines; it simply demonstrates

that civil religion began on an activist note and should not be considered a wholly objective,

unbiased theory as it is often assumed to be. Rather than having description as its goal, it was

geared toward political persuasion.191

A. Neo-Orthodox and Ecumenical Critics

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote one of the earliest and best-known criticisms of Nixon’s

religious performance as president. His article, “The King’s Chapel and the King’s Court,” which

appeared in the August 4, 1969, edition of Christianity and Crisis, criticized Nixon for creating a

“conforming religion” by holding White House church services during his tenure as president.

Nixon, he asserted, had thereby co-opted religion’s social-critical capacity. Such an appropriation

188 Marty, “Two Kinds,” 142-145.189 Wuthnow, Restructuring, 222-224.190 Robert N. Bellah, “Comment: [Twenty Years After Bellah: Whatever Happened to American Civil Religion?],” Sociological Analysis 50, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 147.191 Ibid.

56of religion into a political context was not only unconstitutional, it also weakened religion’s

primaty “prophetic” role of criticizing society from the outside. That is, religion was being turned

into a self-referential device and being used for uncritical, patriotic purposes—a form of idolatry,

he believed. Niebuhr noted that Nixon wanted “to further the cause of ‘religion,’ but “did not

specify that there would have to be a particular quality in that religion.”192 He furthermore

disagreed that “religion per se” could solve all of society’s problems, and neither could

“individual conversion ... cure men of all sin.”

Religion needed an element of “radical religious protest” such that it could place “all

historical reality (including economic, social and radical injustice) to the ‘word of the

Lord’....”193 The heart of Niebuhr’s argument was that religion adopted by an “organization”

could do little in approximating “altruistic conduct;” only individuals were so capable. His

“Protestant realism” argued against anything that claimed to avoid the question of human

sinfulness on a shortcut to progress, claiming that the religion proclaimed from the White House

was a Progressive appeal to what T J . Jackson Lears termed “evasive banality:” the “self-

deceptive” idea that individual conversion would ensure social progress by strengthening

“individual autonomy.”194

Presbyterian minister Charles Henderson, a “new breed” clergyman whose Nixon

Theology continued the neo-orthodox critique articulated by Niebuhr, saw a distinction between

Nixon’s religious language and actions. Henderson was no fan of Nixon, but became interested in

him while serving as chaplain for the Princeton University chapel. Henderson, an active

participant in the religious antiwar protest movement, began where Niebuhr left off in his

criticism of the Nixon administration’s use of religion for political purposes. While there is no

192 Reinhold Niebuhr, “The King’s Chapel and the King’s Court,” Christianity and Crisis 29 (Aug. 4,1969): 212.193 Niebuhr, “The King’s Chapel,” 211-212.194 Ahlstrom, Religious History, 941-942; T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place o f Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation o f American Culture, 1880-1920 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), 17.

57evidence that Henderson met Niebuhr while the latter was teaching at Princeton after retiring

from Union Theological Seminary, Henderson emphasized the same defects in Nixon’s

“theology” as Niebuhr had done. According to Henderson, Nixon certainly saw aspects of the

nation that needed correction, but his language did not equate the nation’s problems with any sort

of dysfunction of the nation itself. Instead, he saw the United States as the “active agent of social

justice” that must make “value judgments.”195 In tying his notions of crisis and struggle to the

nation while seeing the nation as a vehicle of good, Nixon was working from the obviously

“priestly” assumption that the nation is therefore inherently good—untouched by original sin.

Henderson, like Niebuhr, criticized the vagueness of Nixon’s religious statements, but he

was more concerned about the mode of civil religion in which Nixon chose to express his views.

Because Nixon tied religion to the status quo, it had turned into “an instrument of partisan

interests.”196 But more ominously, Henderson warned that “if patriotism and piety are inseparable

attitudes, as they seem[ed] to be for President Nixon, then religion can only be a bastion of

established ideas.”197 Henderson was concerned that Nixon did not appear to think deeply about

theology or spend his leisure time “with men of commanding vision.”198 Such a misuse of

religion by Nixon meant that, ultimately, “religion cannot perform its prophetic function.”199

Henderson recognized a trait in Nixon in which he desired “that his decisions and acts

should be not only sound, but righteous.”200 Yet according to Henderson, Nixon had manipulated

his image in order to appear religious, and was perhaps “more concerned about his religious

image than for the substance of a personal faith.”201 The drawback was that the religious image

195 Charles P. Henderson Jr., The Nixon Theology (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 22.196 Ibid., 207.197 Ibid., 207.198 Ibid., 203.199 Ibid., 207.200 Ibid., xi.201 Ibid., 44-45.

58Nixon appeared to be portraying was not congruent with Henderson’s desire for social change.

It was, rather, the image of a man spiritually aware but aloof to social concerns.

Henderson viewed the presidency as an office that should “exert moral leadership far

beyond the requirements of the Constitution or law.”202 That is, it should lead the fight for social

justice. Faced with the dilemma that Nixon did exert moral leadership, Henderson argued that

Nixon’s was the wrong kind. It was “revivalist” and “middle American liberal”—positive and

idealistic without taking a hard look at human nature.203 Nixon furthermore did not seem to

understand the need for transcendent judgment on his actions; he possessed a desire to control

and to conquer such that America would be glorified, but because he saw the nation as its own

referent and not subject to a higher morality, he impoverished the American spirit by “never

actually confronting the root causes of social injustice.”204 That is, Nixon’s version of civil

religion focused, according to Henderson, on legitimation, while Henderson’s preferred version

focused on humanity. While Nixon saw the human spirit constrained by external forces such as

Communism, Henderson saw a failed domestic social policy at fault. His argument, however,

inched forward to what Doug Rossinow termed the “politics of authenticity:” the desire among

certain segments of the Christian youth culture of the late 1960s for a “radical vision of

democracy.”205

Rossinow saw strains of the social gospel in this “search for authenticity” and

meaning.206 But authenticity was not understood to be exclusive to the political process, as

Niebuhr argued; instead, it was viewed in a therapeutic sense as “the healing of a wound, the

bridging of the awful separation of the human from the divine. Sin was treated as alienation, and

202 Henderson, Nixon Theology, 22.203 Ibid., 191-193.204 Ibid., 193.205 Doug Rossinow, The Politics o f Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 4.206 Ibid., 85.

59salvation now meant authenticity.”207 Curiously, this view of religious experience did not

preclude the institutional practice of religion in which the Nixon White House was engaging;

instead, the New Left radical movement opposed the war and its political supporters, those

“malign forces” that were barriers to social change.208 Nixon’s message was unwelcome, but the

medium, perhaps instead in the hands of a McGovern, would be useful. The New Left’s struggle

for authenticity pushed for social change, change which would refashion society rather than

overthrow it completely.209

Henderson bemoaned “the alienation now prevalent” among the nation’s youth as well as

the “disconnect between rhetoric and reality.”210 Religion’s purpose, to Henderson, was to act as

an “agent of social change,” identifying with “the oppressed and alien.”211 He faulted Nixon for

merely using religion to echo the “liberal pragmatism of the majority” and ignoring its “satir[ic]”

function, writing, “If the symbols of religion are used chiefly to sanctify the status quo, as Nixon

uses them, then religion cannot perform its prophetic function.”212

While Nixon publicly appeared to exalt the nation in his “priestly” fashion, and while he

continued, in the view of critics like Henderson, to pass over difficult political realities with

vague, positive pronouncements, he never viewed America uncritically. In fact, during his well-

known trip to the Lincoln Memorial during the early morning of May 9, 1970, he spoke candidly

with some student protestors about current events and the state of the nation. Nixon summarized

the event the next day in a memo to Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman. Nixon included part of the

memo in his memoirs, but omitted parts of it for reasons not difficult to understand. The first

omission, which discusses what Nixon spoke about with the students, reads:

207 Rossinow, Politics o f Authenticity, 6.208 Ibid., 246, 162-163.209 Ibid., 164.210 Henderson, Nixon Theology, 204.211 Ibid., 207-208.212 Ibid., 207.

60I urged them [when traveling] to start with the United States. I said there was so much to see in this country. I told them that as they went West, that I particularly thought they should go to places like Santa Fe, New Mexico and see American Indians. I pointed out that I knew that on their campuses that the major subject of concern was the Negro problem. I said this was altogether as it should be because of the degradation of slavery that had been imposed upon the Negroes and it would be impossible for us to do everything that we should do to right that wrong, but I pointed out that what we have done with the American Indians was in its way just as bad. We had taken a proud and independent race and virtually destroyed them, and that we had to find ways to bring them back into decent lives in this country. I said along the same lines that they would find in California that the Mexican-Americans were even from an economic standpoint worse off than the Negroes. I said that in both cases we needed to open channels of communication to Indians, to Mexicans as well as to Negroes, and I hoped that they would do so.213

This passage seems completely out of character for the so-called “civil religious priest”

that Henderson, Niebuhr, and other critics considered Nixon to be, showing that, in Nixon’s case,

a simple characterization would not fit him. In Nixon’s mind, he was surrounding himself with

“men of commanding vision,” as he continually liked to emphasize in his book Leaders. It is also

possible he thought often about theology, although his lifelong religious record would suggest

that this “theology” comprised the intricacies of a foreign policy that that would spread “peace

and freedom” as far as realistically possible. Given Nixon’s modernist roots, from which he did

not appear to stray, he combined a metaphorical understanding of Christ’s divinity with a near­

deification of peace and freedom as essential structures for worldwide moral progress.

Finally, it is simply unfair to expect Nixon to conform to the desires of the counterculture

Henderson and Rossinow describe if doing so would require him to step out of “the pretensions of

power”—in effect, to switch parties, disarm the nation, and thus violate the will of his electoral

majorities. Historian Leo Ribuffo notes that differing interpretations of civil religion can have

disastrous effects; President Jimmy Carter’s “prophetic” definition of national greatness, for

example, was that of a nation “humble and not blatant and arrogant;” this resonated with voters

213 Richard Nixon, Lincoln Memorial Visit, memorandum, May 9, 1970, President’s Personal File: Laxalt, Paul to Mindsenty, Joseph Cardinal, box 11, White House Special File, College Park.

61after Watergate and Vietnam. Reagan’s style resonated with voters, however, at a time when,

with the Iranian Revolution as a backdrop, voters preferred a “muscular Protestant.”214

While Nixon often mentioned his allegiance was to the concepts of peace, freedom, and

moral progress, he occasionally observed that the nation was under God, and was able to step out

of his priestly character in order to perform the “social-critical” function of civil religion in

objectively criticize the nation he led. “Too often I think,” he related at his last National Prayer

Breakfast, “we are a little too arrogant. We try to talk to God and tell Him what we want, and

what all of us need to do and what this nation needs to do is to pray in silence and listen to God

and find out what He wants for us, and then we will all do the right thing.”215

Nixon intellectually apprehended the essence of Henderson’s argument while at the same

time being unable or unwilling to refrain from using the religious environment for political

purposes. To Henderson’s credit, the true complexity of Nixon’s religious character was much

more difficult to piece together at that time. The rubric of civil religion focuses on the outward,

visible signs, seeking to isolate them, but is a weak tool for analyzing the “whole person” in any

place but the public square. It describes, but is less helpful for offering advice for the way in

which social alienation may be realistically overcome.

B. Evangelical and Conservative Critics

After Nixon’s downfall, the groups with which he had the most in common—the

conservative, traditional-values, middle-class Americans—felt betrayed and abandoned. Yet

despite this momentary setback, Watergate and the Nixon tapes actually helped further the

conservative renewal throughout the 1970s—the “social and political counterrevolution” that

sought to roll back the values of the 1960s and that became widely commented upon only in the

214 Leo Ribuffo, Right Center Left: Essays in American History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 248.215 Richard Nixon, Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, Jan. 31, 1974, American Presidency Project, UCSB.

62years of Reagan’s presidency.216 While Nixon was still in office, evangelicals had wanted him

to reference his religious views in a more doctrinally specific manner. They voiced criticisms of

the seemingly “vague” nature of his religious expressions because they either did not go far

enough in emphasizing America’s Christian roots, or were not specifically Christian in

appearance. Those who found themselves intimately involved in religious matters at the White

House, such as Billy Graham, suffered a loss of prestige in the aftermath because it appeared—to

others, at least—they had allowed themselves to be used for political purposes.

They did not, however, lose their political influence. Historian Philip Jenkins notes that,

beginning in the late 1960s, a conservative “Protestant religious revival” was forming that would

combine political activism with “a revived emphasis on traditional theological orthodoxies and

biblical literalism.” 21 Conservatives quickly understood that religion had become politicized by

the White House, and after Nixon’s resignation, they became—at least for a short time—more

cautious about government involvement. They also distanced themselves from civil religious

rhetoric, which they came to believe was simply a form of religious whitewash devoid of any true

meaning.

Evangelicals such as Graham felt drawn toward government since the Eisenhower

administration, and found themselves accepted during the Nixon years because, it appeared,

Nixon believed in, and encouraged, their message. His use of religion was political, but it seems

that those willing to become associated with the administration felt the benefits outweighed the

negatives. Nixon understood this dilemma well, writing in In the Arena that it was he who

counseled Graham not to publicly endorse him before the 1960, 1968, or 1972 elections so as to

216 Philip Jenkins, Decade o f Nightmares: The End o f the Sixties and the Making o f Eighties America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 5, 48-49. Jenkins notes that the 1970s were a time of conservative reorganization, but that most observers analyzed this reorganization as if it happened after Reagan took office. Yet it is more accurate to say that Reagan “gave form and direction to powerful social currents,” and “join[ed] a revolution already in progress,” (8,22-23).217 Jenkins, Decade, 83—85.

63keep Graham’s ministry untainted by partisan politics.218 The impression of Nixon having to

restrain an eager Graham is unmistakable, but the point is that Nixon was interested in religion,

while his administration seemed to attract the support of specific Christian denominations. Later

observers were dismayed that Nixon did not attempt to relate his own religious feelings in a time

of crisis; Charles Colson and Billy Graham both thought Nixon “went to the brink and backed

away” during his 1974 Presidential Prayer Breakfast remarks.219

After Watergate and the resignation, religious conservatives felt they had been used by

the Nixon Administration, but this is perhaps because of the acute embarrassment the felt when

presented with the deeds of the man with whom they were publicly associated. In one sense, the

evangelicals were correct: despite Nixon’s personal intent of keeping ministers out of politics,

many of his aides later made clear that the White House Prayer Breakfasts and Church Services

were used for political purposes. One example is especially representative of how, in the attempt

to cultivate a relationship with Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield, an outspoken evangelical, religion

was manipulated in a manner so seemingly irreverent that Nixon’s conservative critics were

correct to sense that they, too, might have dabbled too deeply into government affairs.

The courting of Hatfield was part of the Nixon team’s efforts to secure support for the

nomination to the Supreme Court of Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., of South Carolina. When two

vacancies emerged on the Court, Nixon successfully nominated Warren Burger, and then selected

Haynsworth as a part of his “Southern Strategy.” Nixon had needed a Republican Senator to “go

218 Nixon writes: “I advised him not to endorse me, or for that matter any other candidate for office. I also urged him not to join the Moral Majority, not because I do not support most of the candidates they do, but because I believe a minister cannot carry out his major mission in life as effectively if he dabbles in politics. (Nixon, In the Arena, 90.)219 See Charles Colson, Born Again (Old Tappan, NJ: Spire Books, 1977), 183. In a February 2, 1974, letter to Nixon, Graham wrote: “Your remarks concerning the spiritual life of Lincoln were deeply appreciated. I had rather hoped that you would go from the wonderful expression about Lincoln’s dependence on the Lord in times of crisis, to your own personal experience. I think everyone was waiting for it and expecting it. As one Senator said to me afterward, ‘he went to the brink and backed away.’ In any event, everyone was appreciative. While I know you have a personal and private commitment, yet at some point many are hoping and praying that you will state it publicly...” (President’s Personal File: Materials Removed from President’s Desk, 1969-74, box 188, White House Special File, College Park).

64to bat” for Haynsworth, but some of Haynsworth’s previous legal decisions raised questions in

the matters of race and financial misconduct. By the time Hatfield was approached, in late

October, the Haynsworth matter had turned into an all-out battle, but most Senators finally voted

Haynsworth down on November 21.22°

During the October 21, 1969, Presidential Prayer Breakfast, White House staffer Bryce

Harlow was seated across from Senator Hatfield. Harlow, whose tactic was “us[ing] pet projects

as incentives,” soon became aware of the “startling reactions that [Hatfield’s] efforts [were]

producing in foreign countries... .”221 Senator Hatfield had become a prestigious figure after the

prayer groups he had been promoting abroad became highly successful fixtures of many foreign

governments. Harlow related this news about Hatfield in a memo, adding: “But more to the point:

the prayer breakfast Thing is a superb ploy from which to gravitate into the Haynsworth matter,

and I would like very much for the President to discuss Haynsworth with Hatfield.”222 Nixon met

with Hatfield for half an hour on November 11, 1969, and according to a November 24 memo

written by Harlow to the staff secretary, the meeting was cordial but not as successful as hoped.

Nevertheless, Nixon’s staffers considered Hatfield a valuable contact because of his many

international connections.

220 Dean J. Kotlowski, “Trial By Error: Nixon, the Senate, and the Haynsworth Nomination,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 77, 80—82; Robert Mason, Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 54-55.221 Bryce Harlow to Bob Haldeman, memorandum, Oct. 27, 1969, RM Religious Matters 1-1-73/7-31-74, box 3, White House Central Files, College Park.222 Ibid. Haynsworth is often confused with Nixon’s other Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell, who was also defeated during the nomination process. Carswell was defeated when revelations of his past views on segregation and white supremacy came forth in the nomination hearings. See Mason, Richard Nixon, 55, 89.223 Bryce Harlow to staff secretaiy, memorandum, Nov. 24, 1969, RM Religious Matters 1-1-73/7-31-74, box 3, White House Central Files, College Park. Emphasis in original. According to Harlow’s memo, Hatfield began by discussing his “leadership in prayer group activities in a number of nations overseas.” The president was interested and directed that Hatfield be given copies of the White House Sunday Service booklet. Hatfield then brought up an issue regarding a logging problem in Oregon, which also evoked sympathy from Nixon. Then Nixon asked for Hatfield’s support for Judge Haynsworth. Hatfield demurred, uncomfortable with Haynsworth’s “civil rights convictions.” Despite Nixon’s attempts to persuade Hatfield to the contrary, the meeting ended with Hatfield’s promise to “consider carefully the President’s view.”

65The point Nixon’s conservative critics routinely missed was that Nixon was interested

in moral leadership and saw conservative religious figures as his allies in that endeavor, but that

he was unwilling or unable to use his office as a “bully pulpit” to drive the nation in the explicitly

Christian direction its citizens desired. While Nixon agreed with their views, he usually did so in

private, whereas he saw the public sphere as the place for a more overarching form of religious

leadership. Despite the fact that his political rhetoric was replete with appeals to morality and to

the necessity of religious faith, the conservatives thought this was simply an exercise essentially

in civil religion—which they opposed because it appeared Christian in form but religiously

meaningless in substance.224

V. CONCLUSION: NIXON’S RELIGIOUS IMPACT; THEORY VS. PRACTICE

Two years after Nixon’s resignation, Carl F. H. Henry, theologian and editor of

Christianity Today, attempted to make sense of the Nixon he had observed since meeting him in

1962. During that 1962 meeting, Henry noticed that Nixon was “remarkably imprecise about

spiritual realities and enduring ethical concerns.”225 To Henry, Nixon regarded himself as 4tthe

confident champion of a free world where divine Providence benevolently guarantees America’s

ongoing global leadership, rather than, as in the Bill of Rights, towers as the supreme Source,

Sanction, and Stipulator of universal human rights.226 Henry, tactfully subtle, accused Nixon of

harboring a “vague” religious sense that enabled him to bypass American legal strictures in light

224 For example, Martin Marty paraphrased Senator Hatfield as remarking at a Presidential Prayer Breakfast during Nixon’s presidency that “America should not worship the captive tribal god of civil religion but should be open to the God of biblical faith” (Marty, “Two Kinds,” 141). Another theme of opposition to civil religion centers around possible abuses by the state of denominational religion. Theologian Herbert Richardson, in his article “Civil Religion in the Theological Perspective,” made the allusion to Nazi Germany, one of the most troubling examples in recent memory of co-optation of the church by the state. Richardson saw in Bellah’s argument hints of this co-optation, and wrote that “there is nothing the church (or anyone else) believes that cannot be woven into the state’s mythology” (Herbert Richardson, “Civil Religion in Theological Perspective,” in Richey and Jones, eds., American Civil Religion, 180-182).225 Henry, “Reflections on a Nation,” 56.226 Ibid.

66of the greater goal of “global leadership.” Yet Henry blamed the evangelical right for not

reigning Nixon in or taking him to task for such theological vagaries:

American evangelicals are sometimes a strange lot: as a condition of church membership they demand articulate doctrinal subscription and a vital personal faith; at the same time they read evangelical commitment into the circumstance that a president entertains an evangelical in his home or attends a crusade meeting ... or occasionally attends a prayer breakfast.227

Henry argued that frequent display of civil religion in general was a sign of national

spiritual malaise; all instrumentalized notions of power led to “reliance on unjust means to defeat

all opposing views and priority of political power over God.”228 Once religion had become

separated from tradition, both the left and the right sought to “exploit the nation’s possibilities for

selfish gain.” But “fundamentalism,” Henry wrote, went too far, putting too much “faith in

democracy as the political exegesis of revealed religion.”229 As a result, evangelicals like Graham

were shocked because they had become deeply involved in the political process.

Despite Nixon’s focus on the spiritual aspects, Henry noted that the nation actually

became spiritually impoverished because its leaders, Nixon at their head, had set forth a doctrine

of spiritual direction that did not ask God for guidance. It rather viewed individual spiritual

commitment as requisite for a greater national mission that did not necessarily take God into

account. Henry was not simply advocating “prophetic” civil religion, however; he believed the

concept of civil religion missed the point altogether: it used reason and relegated religion to

subordinate status, not understanding that both God’s judgment and blessing are transcendent and

not residing in the linguistic structures of “prophetic” or “priestly” models of civil religion.

Henry’s evangelical critique called for “a sense of historical perspective” in order to temper any

“arrogance” and “conceit of power” within America leadership 230

227 Henry, “Reflections on a Nation,” 56.228 Ibid., 57.229 Ibid., 57-58.230 Ibid., 57, 59.

67Interestingly, Nixon’s Whittier professor Paul Smith made similar observations as

Henry in his 1977 oral history interview. He regretted not teaching Nixon about another historical

figure from California who had fallen to great depths after holding high office.231 Smith’s

conclusion was that Nixon approached all problems with a lawyer’s mentality, which was simply

to “go to the limits of the law in winning.”232 Smith did not regard Nixon as immoral, but rather a

successful politician with a great deal of ambition, whose drive needed tempering by moral

constraint.

The success of correctly judging Nixon’s actions, especially in light of the premium he

placed on spiritual leadership, is one of standards. It is simple to conclude, as James David Barber

did, that “Nixon was a bad man,” but judgments employing two obvious polarities have little

nuance or explanatory power.233 Nixon may well have been a good man—good, that is, in his

intentions and beliefs—who simply failed to live up to his avowed moral standards. One possible

explanation for the conduct of which people of both parties disapproved, the language on the

White House tapes and his handling of the Watergate affair, is that his view of morality placed

little emphasis on personal actions. National progress through spiritual renewal was a large idea;

belief in a God who judges personal actions and holds all persons accountable, perhaps was less

important to Nixon.

His faults aside, Nixon held a relatively stable religious philosophy throughout his life.

Any large-scale alteration in his belief, if it occurred, did so during his college years; his later

professions appear to be merely variations on a theme anchored in modernism with hints of his

Quaker upbringing. Upon gaining political experience, Nixon adopted a theory of history and

religious leadership that would fit within that structure of belief. He retained his metaphorical

231 Schulte, ed., The Young Nixon, 157. Smith was referring to Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California who became impoverished through careless living, including debt and gambling.232 Schulte, ed., The Young Nixon, 181.233 James David Barber, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), 366.

68understanding of Christ and God, and he mentioned “spirit,” but he does not seem to have

viewed these three concepts as his own version of the Holy Trinity. He was often mistaken as an

orthodox evangelical for his close association with Billy Graham and other conservative causes.

However contradictory, inconclusive, and theologically unsatisfying, his belief held together,

above all, under the ideal of achievement, a fitting system for that ambitious and driven politician.

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74

VITA

Robert Beniamin Abel

Robert B. Abel was bom in San Diego, California, on July 28, 1980. He received

a B.A. from San Diego State University in 2002 with a degree in Social Science.

In August 2007, he entered the College of William and Mary in Virginia as a

graduate student in the Department of History. He defended this thesis in the spring of

2008. He is currently an editorial apprentice at the Omohundro Institute of Early

American History and Culture.